Weeks of 3 and 10 July - DINOSAURS!

I have to say, I need to reconfigure the way I record the weeks. Maybe we'll start just counting them.

We are currently trying to decide on an official "start" date for the sake of records. I'd like to take pictures of Abby (because being in kinder is a milestone) and then do a bit of an all-about-me type sheet. I'm sure the other kids will participate. I also think Daddy is planning on taking off and we'll head to do something really fun that she wouldn't be able to participate in if she were in school.

Abby still brings up going to school occasionally. The last time I reminded her that she'd be staying home like her cousins or like a friend of the family does here in Oklahoma. Then I commented that school is a lot of sitting at a desk and not as much play. She's a quick one, though, and commented, "Mom, that's not true. Kids who go to school do play there. Why would they have playgrounds if they didn't?" I guess you can't argue with that reasoning.

Anyway, on to our week...

Phonics/Reading:

We adjusted the way we did our lessons this week. Instead of them narrated on the computer, I wrote down the words and the things they were reviewing and/or learning in each lesson before the story and we reviewed them on the white board. This seemed a lot more exciting to Abby. The added bonus is that she occasionally wanted to write what I had written so we practiced handwriting too. Score!

After one such lesson, Abby created a reading lesson for me! Though she filled in all the openings of the letters so it's hard to read... It says "Wo th cat steppt in th pond"

And here she is doing her own story time!

ABCs:

We reviewed the letters Z and R these last two weeks. Ellie really is getting into the letters more, which is neat because just plain letters and their sounds is getting too easy for Emmett.

So, we'll be adding in some letter tracing. We've also been playing a blending game in the car where I say a word really drawn out and maybe even with a few pauses between sounds and he tells me the word "the fast way." It was confusing for him at first, but I had Abby demonstrate and he caught on pretty quickly. It is right at his level, too, so it challenges him...and he loves a challenge.

Unit Study:

We are taking a trip to Colorado at the end of this week. While we're there, we're planning on visiting Dinosaur Ridge. Couple that and the fact that Abby has been telling us she's a "dinosaur expert," it was perfect timing for a unit study on dinosaurs. And it was packed full!

On the first day we went to the library and picked up books to add to our 6 or 7 books we already own about dinos. We ended up with 22 items and I had to carefully select those! I should've known that dinosaurs would have taken up a few shelves in the juvenile section. We read nearly 30 different books about dinosaurs!

We learned that dinosaur means "terrible lizard." We talked about what a lizard was and looked up pictures. We even talked a bit about reptiles and what defines them.

We watched a documentary on a dinosaur mummy on Netflix. Abby was enthralled with it and at one point exclaimed, "Look, Mom! That dinosaur DID have scales!" It also prompted a few discussions on what DNA is...at a K level, of course.

We broke out the paints and made dinosaur footprints. Painting is always a hit at our house. These "footprints" aren't hard to make either. Paint a palm, stamp it down (while saying, "STOMP!" of course!) and then add some toes with your thumb.

The kids even got their hair sprayed like dinos. (We only had pink, so imagine it was green.) this one was Emmett's idea. Notice his armor "like a corythosaurus!" he told me.

We picked up dinosaur toys at the store and role-played with those. These little figurines took a beating.

The next day our figurines helped us to learn about fossils as we made our own. We read an awesome Let's Read and Find Out book about fossils and we learned the word "paleontologist."

We did a cute little color-matching file folder game for Ellie, who thinks she is just as old as Abby and demands to participate in nearly everything she is awake for.

On Saturday, when Daddy was off work, we went to the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. There we got to see dinosaur skeletons.

We got to touch and feel real fossils.

And, of course, they got to do the fossil-dig thing.

The next day, we told the kids that we thought we had spied a dinosaur egg in our back yard. They were so excited to go hunt it out! If you can't tell, it's a watermelon that I (mostly) painted white. They thought the dino egg hunt was great fun.

We also learned where dinosaur bones had been found, which segued very nicely into learning our continents. I tried to have Abby point to them all this past week so she had some review. She seems to get Australia and Asia confused.

We did an awesome summer-time experiment. We froze our trusty dino figures in ice (in layers) and had the kids excavate them out. Emmett loved it and was very into the problem-solving nature of it. I wonder if I had just given Abby the blocks of ice alone if she had kept with it long enough to get the dinosaurs out...or if she would have waited "a few days" like she suggested for the sun to do the job for her.

I gave them many different tools to try and get 'em out: salt, sugar, water, forks, brushes, etc.

They worked in the shade a bit (where I had set them up), but after a few minutes, they decided if they moved the big ice blocks to the sun it would melt quicker.

The first one is freed!

The favorite method to melting was pouring on warm-ish water.

Eventually, though, it was decided that they should just put the ice in some water...which is how the rest of them were freed.

They played with some neat apps on the iPad: Dinosaur Zoo and Ultimate Dinopedia were hits.

Even Hyrum participated in our theme.

Well, okay...this one's better...

We talked about the words carnivore, herbivore and omnivore and found a dinosaur for each carnivore and herbivore and then a picture of the kids for omnivore. They thought that was funny.

Between books, and new words they learned, and fossils, and what happened to the dinosaurs, etc we did a whole lot of learning these past two weeks! A lot of our notebook pieces came from Homeschool Share, but I also made quite a bit of our own. Abby's stuff took up four entire pages!

Read-Alouds:

To go along with our dinosaur theme, we read Dinosaurs Before Dark this week. There were parts where Abby and Emmett were begging to listen to the next chapter, but I declined, just to leave them hanging. They loved it so much we'll be reading the second one, The Knight at Dawn, during our vacation.

Life:

One rainy day I introduced Abby and Emmett to the game of War (without face cards). They liked the game, except the losing part. LOL

Abby and Emmett also got an email from Daddy's parents and Abby typed back her own response. She thought that was pretty neat.