D is for Dinosaur

Alex loves dinosaurs so we of course had a D is for dinosaur day.

He made a Letter D dinosaur. I guess it reminded him of a snake because he gave it a snake tongue. I cut out all the pieces and directed him how to glue it together.

Another craft we did a glue resist dinosaur skeleton. I saw this on Pinterest, but the original post is from That Artist Women. I just drew a very rough skeleton of a dinosaur in glue. Once it was dry, Alex painted over it with brown paint to reveal the skeleton.

About a week ago we made some salt dough "fossils" in preparation for Dino Day. I used a simple salt dough recipe:

Ingredients

1 cup salt
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup luke warm water

Directions

1. In a large bowl mix salt and flour.

2. Gradually stir in water. Mix well until it forms a doughy consistency.

3. With your hands form a ball with your dough and kneed it for at least 5 minutes. The longer you kneed your dough the smoother it will be.

When our dough was ready we rolled it out to about a 1/2 inch thickness and pressed some small plastic dinosaurs in the dough. I cooked them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 1 hour but they were still soft. They air dried the rest of the week.




We finally got a sunny day this week so I buried them in Alex's sandbox and let him go on a "dino dig." It was a fun activity, I made about 6 of them and Alex wanted me to "hide" them again and again for him to find. He really liked finding them, brushing them off and then blowing off the sand.




















We also did some worksheets from 2 Teaching Mommies' Dinosaur preschool pack.

Counting Dinos

Sorting small, medium and large dinos

Do a Dot Letter D is for dino

For lunch I made Alex a sad little peanut butter and jelly dino sandwich with some candy corn spikes. I really need to step up my creativeness with the themed food. LOL




The books we read were:






Check out some of our other dinosaur related activities here.

D is for Ducks

Yesterday was all about ducks. Alex made a really easy paper plate duck.

He did a tracing page and a coloring page from Spell Outloud Homeschool

Not sure why they are all wearing purple hats. LOL

We did a sink or float activity. I gave a bunch or random things and asked Alex whether he thought it would sink or float. At first he had no idea, but after a few he was doing pretty well at predicting.

After we did the sink and float activity I colored the water blue with some food coloring and gathered all our rubber ducks, some foam letter D's and some foam shapes. Alex had fun free playing with them in the water.

 

For lunch I made Alex a simple turkey roll up with some duck shaped cheese and some yogurt with some yellow sprinkles.

We played a game that Alex got last Christmas. Cranium Duck Duck 1.2.3. It is a cute simple counting game where the object is to help the mommy duck make her way around the board to pick up all her baby ducklings.

We watched classic Sesame Street's Youtube clip "Rubber Duckie".

We read a few good duck themed books. Robert McCloskey's Make Way For Ducklings is a favorite of mine. We always go see the statue of Mrs. Mallard and Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack in Boston's Public Garden when we go to the city.  

The Doctor is In

Today we did a "D" is for Doctor. It was a lot of fun!

Alex did some printables from Homeschool Creations' Doctor and Nurse Preschool Pack

D is for Doctor tracing sheet

Silhouette matching

He made a paper doctor's bag. We used black construction paper and taped in some "medical supplies" ( a cotton ball, a band-aid, a tongue depressor and a piece of gauze).

And sadly Alex's teddy bear "Nemo" had a terrible accident and fell down the stairs. Luckily Dr. Alex made him all better.

Imaginative play is so important, we love playing dress up.




I am kind of hesitant to even post the picture of Alex's doctor lunch. It is not very creative and kind of strange combination. Tomorrow is grocery shopping day :/

Banana yogurt with star sprinkles, Cheerios, heart shaped apples, carrots with a doctor toothpick, and some graham cracker sticks.

For books we read:

D is for Dogs

Today we started learning about the letter "D".  Today's theme was dogs.  Alex put together a letter D dog. I cut out all the pieces and directed him how to put it together. He drew to black spots on it.

Alex did a bunch of dog/puppy worksheets from Confessions of A Homeschooler.

Some dog bone counting

Size sorting

Pre-writing skills...He's definitely improving!

 For a fun and messy activity we made some homemade dog bones for our dog. I got the recipe from Pink Pistachio's blog. They were simple to make and Lucy (our dog) LOVED them.

Adding the ingredients

Lucky for us my Mom had a dog bone cookie cutter!

Showing off the dog bones before they were baked.

They are done!

Lucy approved!

Alex was kind of bummed out they weren't for him to eat. I guess he could have tried one, there isn't anything inedible in them. He got over it fast when he saw the lunch I made him.

I cut a blueberry Nutri-Grain bar to look like a dog bone, the dog is made from Nutella and peanut butter on whole wheat bread with M&M's for eyes and nose, and there was some Chex Mix all served up on a dog themed divided plate. Alex loved it all!

Its been raining for days so I let Alex got to watch one of his favorite movies, The Adventures of Otis and Milo


(See all Family Films)

We found quite a few good dog books to read, check them out: