Preschool Corner / Weekly Wrap-Up - Dinosaurs

Goodness, we did our dinosaur theme way back in February, and I am just now getting around to writing about it.  I’m sure I’m not going to remember everything we did.

Some of the activities for this theme were homemade, because I wasn’t able to find what I was looking for online (or anywhere else for that matter) for a reasonable price… meaning free. ;)  My drawing skills leave a lot to be desired, but I am sharing the printables I made anyway, in case they meet a need for someone else, or give a better artist than I an idea of something to make!  I’ve linked to them where appropriate.

I’ve tried to organize the activities by skill set, but many of them overlap, so bear with me!

First, Sensory:
I put together a little rice and noodles sensory bin for M and placed some of his toy dinos in it along with some scoops.  He had fun just playing with them.

Math Skills:
We worked on counting with this printout from Prekinders.  I wrote in the numerals and the dots and M counted them, then matched them up. 

I also pulled out this dinosaur and egg file folder game that I made a long time ago (from here), for some easy color matching:

I turned two boxes into Triceratops and we took turns rolling the die, then feeding our dinos leaves with the tweezers.  The first to run out of leaves was the winner.  M really enjoyed this one!

He was just beginning to show an interest in measuring, so we measured dinosaur bones!  I had him mark the correct answer with a paperclip for fine motor work.

He always enjoys the shape crafts I’ve made for him.  This little Stegosaurus turned out awfully cute. :) 
And we sorted some little dinosaur cut outs by color:  
Fine Motor Skills:
M used a q-tip to paint the tiny dots on this page from Making Learning Fun:

I printed out some shapes (one is a dino, the others were just for fun) from Preschool Express.  To do this activity, M poked push pins into the cork board along the outlines on each paper.  This is a great workout for that tripod grasp.

And he did a dinosaur lacing carhttp://www.scribd.com/full/32089331?access_key=key-13l1pf4kzdo43w4xs505d:
Sorry I don’t have pictures of the finished work for some of these!

Literacy Skills:
We stamped out big and little letters on these dinosaur sheets from Prekinders.  I put a variety of upper and lower case letters in a pillowcase and we took turns pulling one out then finding it on the pages and stamping it out. 

And we put together upper and lower case letters on dinosaur puzzles.  I made these and despite the poor artwork, M really enjoyed this.  It was good for working on that mama and baby letter matching as well as reviewing the names of some dinosaurs.

Art and Poetry:
M used his toy dinos to make some dinosaur footprint art.  Some trucks got in on the action too. :)

I found a cute dinosaur poem from here and made some little stick puppets to use while we say it.  This is a great poem for working on ordinal numbers.

Science:
I found this very informative, albeit somewhat dry, little book about dinosaurs at Target.  We looked through it and talked about how some dinosaurs were plant eaters and some were meat eaters.  Then we matched up some of M’s toy dinos with the pictures in the book and talked about their long funny names.  It’s so cute to hear him say brachiosaurus and stegosaurus. :)

The following was not really a science activity, although we did use it to review the names of dinosaurs.  I noticed that M had many sets of matching dinos in his enormous box full of dinos.  So I set some up on one side of the room, and put the matches on the other end.  M had to pick one up and look at it, then set it down and run to the other side of the room to find its match.  This worked on memory skills, matching skills, and was just a good large motor workout.  He loved this!  
I found some life cycle cards here, and wanted M to sequence them.  He had a bit of trouble with this so I quickly made some numbered squares for him to use.  Somehow this helped and he was able to describe the sequence perfectly!

And, last of all, we had fun killing off dinosaurs with molten lava in a volcano. :)  The things I find myself doing (and having fun doing) as the mom of a little boy never cease to amaze me.
Stay tuned for a post about the dinosaur books we loved!

I’ll be linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up – check them both out for some great activity ideas!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Book Review – Saint Clare, Beyond the Legend, by Marco Bartoli

I expected this book to be a biography of Saint Clare of Assisi, but it was more an account of what has already been written about Clare, and how this information was come by, as well as a discussion about how accurate (or inaccurate) the information we have about Clare may be.

Nevertheless, though it wasn’t what I expected, it did hold my attention and I learned quite a bit – about Clare and her beliefs, as well as about the times in which she lived. 

Clare’s story is entwined in the story of Saint Francis of Assisi, and so I also learned a bit about Francis.  Many of us know about Francis, the lover of nature and animals, but he was apparently even more so a lover of lepers and the extremely poor.  Clare followed in his spiritual footsteps, loving poverty to the extent of owning absolutely nothing of her own.  Born into a wealthy and noble family, through her love of God she developed a social conscience that would not allow her to live in luxury while knowing there were many at that time in Italy who were the poorest of the poor.

The fact that we have any account of Clare, a woman living as a religious in the 13th century, is amazing.  Her order of nuns were a silent order (except in cases of necessity) and Marco Bartoli makes a point of the fact that despite being cloistered and silent, Clare’s life of holiness spoke out loudly in a time when women were hardly considered prominent members of society or worth listening to.  In other words, Clare definitely made an impression.

I came away from this book wanting to know more about St. Clare, and will be looking for an actual biography about her.  It’s possible that we may never know the complete story of St. Clare of Assisi since she did live in the middle ages, but I feel she is a great example for Christians of any age or time.

Thank you to the Catholic Company for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.