D is for Dinosaur!

I have no misconception that more than a handful of people will be interested in these posts. However I do want to document them. So here goes...

Peanut and I used to do preschool work together before Little Cat came along. We've been on a break for a bit but we're ready to dive back in. Each week will have a letter-based theme. Other than that things will be flexible.

We started with an easy one: dinosaurs. Peanut loves them and there are a ton of activities available. 

First I separated out our Dino books for easy reading access.

The week started with a trip to the Sam Noble Natural History museum- it was their free day (first Monday of every month!). 

Even little cat got in on the action.

On Tuesday we started our main activity. 

I made dinosaur eggs:

1 c dried out used coffee grounds (recycled from ox's work)

1 c flour

1/2 c sand (stolen from local playground)

1/2 c salt

3/4 c water

Mix by hand. Form around small dinos. Bake at 200 for 30 mins.

Peanut got to break them apart and find the new dinos inside. He loved it!

Next we combined these new dinos with all his others. It's a little ridiculous.

Then the sorting began. We sorted by definition...

And diet...

And locomotion...

Size

Bone structure

Timeline

And location

We did this a couple times during the week and as we categorized we counted.

We also did letter D writing practice but that us boring so I didn't take a picture.

Our last main project was watercolor. Peanut has been interested since we went to an art festival and an artist there, named Spencer Mellow, let him help. 

He insisted on wiping his shirt across the paper just like Spencer Mellow had.

The dinosaur part of the project came from me drawing dinosaurs on the paper in white crayon before he started. Then they surprised him.

Overall I liked most of what we did. 

The most labor intensive part was learning about and classifying the dinosaurs so that I was able to teach him. This will probably be true of every subject we study.

The most difficult part was that Peanut really knows more about dinosaurs than I do, since his show of choice is any Dino documentary, and he speaks with such conviction that I'm not always sure when he knows something or is making it up.