Skip to main content

Dinosaurs Theme


Our Dinosaur theme is always a favorite. There are many activities I add to our schedule to help children learn and engage with dinosaurs. We read books and sing the Laurie Berkner "We Are the Dinosaurs" song of course but there's so much more. We color a dinosaur template and then add a plate to their back for every letter of their name.  The student then writes the letters of their name on the plates and gives the dinosaur a background.

I pull out my toy dinosaurs and add them to our centers. In the art center, children can walk a dinosaur through paint and then onto the paper to make footprints.  In the fine motor center, they can stomp the dinosaurs through playdough or build a home for the dinosaur in the block center. In the math center, children can weigh and measure the dinosaur and compare and contrast different types of dinosuars. In the science center, students can look at pictures of dinosaurs and notice characteristics. In the langauge arts center, students can draw a picture of their favorite dinosaur and then using the words cards, write the dinosaurs's name.

My students love the "How Do Dinosaurs..." series. Other dinosaur books we read are:
*"Dinosaur Roar"
*"Dinosaurumpus"
*"When Dinosaurs Came with Everything"
*"The Dinosaur in My Backyard"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fine Motor Activities

  Fine Motor strength is so important to develop in order to prepare students to write. We have a lot of fun fine motor activities and centers that we use. We find different materials to cut.  We use a vertical surface to draw, color and paint. For this activity, we painted blueberries with clothespins and blue pom poms.  Mini erasers can be used for many things such as tracing letters and sorting.  Giant pushpins can be used with supervision to make our names or letters, numerals and shapes.  Q-tips make a fun paintbrush that uses a different hand motion then swiping. Many literacy and math games also use fine motor skills like this pie sorting game. We also practice fingerplays and draw in our journals to strengthen our fingers to get ready for kindergarten.
Post a Comment
Read more

Daily Preschool Schedule

Our Preschool runs a half day program so we have a morning class and a completely seperate afternoon class.  Here's the lesson plan form that I have tweeked and found to be helpful in fitting everything into our short day. Class Name_________ Week #____  Day #____ Theme_____________ 9:00-9:25 Arrival and Free Choice Play 9:25-9:30 Clean Up 9:30-9:45 Morning Meeting and Music 9:45-10:00 Gross Motor Play 10:00-10:15 Math Circle Time 10:15-10:20 Brain Break and Movement 10:20-10:35 Fine Motor Table Work 10:35-10:55 Snack and Quiet Time 10:55-11:10 Literacy/Science/Social Studies Read Aloud Read: Focus: 11:10-11:25 Centers 1)math center: 2) art center: 3) fine motor center: 4)language arts center: 11:25-11:30 Clean up and Dismissal
Post a Comment
Read more

Body and Senses Theme

I usually spend a day for each of the basic five senses and then further the theme by spending a few more days covering the basic parts and functions of the body such as heart, lungs, skin, and brain. For the sense of taste, I give each child something sour (lemon drop), something salty (pretzel), and something sweet (a piece of chocolate) to eat. We discuss the tastes and which they like the best. Then we discuss our tongues. Each student can be given a mirror to look into to see their tongue and the taste buds on it. We read "Jamberry" and try some different flavors of jam. For the sense of smell, I place items in film canisters and allow each child to smell each item and guess what it is. Then we graph which smells we like and do not like. A follow up activity is to ask students to determine which items will have a smell and then walk the items around and have students smell them and determine if their guesses were correct. I use things like mustard, a comb, or...
Post a Comment
Read more