Mrs. Hannah's Kinder-Prep: Dinosaurs

We've had a DINOMITE week studying our dinosaur theme! We've made dinosaurs out of our footprints, created dinosaurs out of shapes, looked at frozen dinosaur "eggs", danced to "Dino Stomp", measured and compared ourselves to the length of real dinosaurs, dug for letters like paleontologists dig for dino bones, and we've learned a variety of new letter and number skills as well. We reviewed all of our letters, numbers, and shapes so far and focused specifically on letter "H" and number 5 this week. It's been loads of fun, and I hope you enjoy seeing all of our pics from the week! See you after Fall Break on Wednesday, October 17th!

Dino Stomp Song

letter H song with Jack Hartmann

We created our own dinosaur "fossils" with salt dough by rolling it out, pushing a small dinosaur into the dough, letting it dry and bake, and then painting the dinosaur print with brown paint.

They turned out so cute, and the kiddos got to take them home! :)

We used our feet to create footprints that we formed into dinosaurs with teeth and eyes. Look for these in the hallway!

Paintbrushes tend to tickle our feet!

We created our own dinosaurs out of shapes and then stamped the word "DINOSAUR" on it afterward. These are also hanging at the end of the hallway across from the bathroom. :)

We got a chance to be paleontologists when we dug for letters in a bin of beans and then had to match the correct puzzle piece inside the puzzle.

We worked really hard to review all the skills we've covered so far. We reviewed letters, numbers, shapes and color words on our review sheet that is now inside our reading folders. It's a great sheet to study over Fall Break. :)

We practiced reviewing our letters on dry erase boards as well. They love using dry erase markers, so review of name writing and letter writing at home can be fun too!

We worked on putting our names in order with our name envelopes in class.

We traced our numbers on dinosaur sheets.

I filled up balloons with water and a small plastic dinosaur and froze them overnight. Then, I removed the balloon, and we could see a dinosaur frozen inside the "egg". They used small wooden hammers and pegs and droppers of warm water to try to get the ice to melt or chip away.

Look what we found inside!

Kiddos were so excited when they found the dinosaurs. :)

We read the book, "How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night" and started talking about what it would be like to have a dinosaur lying next to us in bed. :) So, to give them a concept of size, I decided to tape pieces of yarn the length of some of the dinosaurs we've been studying onto the floor. One of them was almost as long as the entire room! One of them was even smaller than our smallest kiddos in the class. Then, we looked to see how long we were and how long I was compared to the length of dinosaurs if they were on the floor next to us. It also gave kiddos a concept of how big actual dinosaur fossils would be if we found them in the ground.

For Show and Tell, we brought in items that started with the letter "H".

We had 1 harmonica.

We had 1 helmet.

We had 1 hamster.

We had 4 horses.

We had 1 heart.

We had 1 "Hero" train.

We had 1 hammer.

We had 1 helicopter.

We had 1 hippo.

We had 1 hanger.

We had 1 hen.

We had 1 hat.

We played with friends inside the classroom.

We loved doing the "Dino Stomp" song video on You Tube. You should check it out in the link at the top of the blog!

We worked our minds and bodies in the Minds in Motion room.

Thanks to your fundraising efforts and generosity, these are just a few of the new items we've gotten in so far for our school. The bean bag toss game and a new Sit and Spin that isn't broken for our green room activities. :)