Dinosaur Month!

Happy Friday! It's been a while since I've posted about our exciting studies! July was dinosaur month and here is what we were up to:

The dinosaurs surely came a marching! The children learned all about the Jurassic and Triassic periods in time.  There were many dinosaurs that roamed the earth including herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores.  The children leaned that plant eaters can be very large, they used all four legs, had very long necks to eat from the tree tops and had flat teeth for grinding.  The meat eaters usually only used two legs to help them run super fast.  Many of the children's art activities have already gone home and here is a little more explanation about what we did...  We investigated dinosaur scales while making scale prints with bubble wrap and fossil bone replicas of a T-Rex using Q-tips.  We also talked about Amber as a preserving substance.  The children had the opportunity to look through a magnifying glass to see an accent bug inside a real piece of Amber.  After the explorations, the children created their very own Amber specimen.  So cool!  Other activities included volcano eruptions, dino tracings with crayons, paper plate brontosaurus' and creating bone and trace fossils in clay.  

The stories we shared with the children included, "How the Dinosaur got to the Museum" by Jessie Hartland, "Dinosaur Farm" by Frann Preston-Gannon and "Oh Say Can You Say Di-No-Saur?" by Bonnie Worth, just to name a few!

By the end of the month, the children could easily discriminate between herbivores and carnivores just by observing their distinguishing features! 

Here's What's Coming Up Next!
August is Ocean Animal Month! The children will be exploring the various types of ocean mammals including seals, sea lions and otters and we'll toss in a reptile for good measure... sea turtles too!  The next blog post will post during the last week of August.  The weekly blog posts will resume in September!

Dates to Remember:
August 14th: All updated paperwork is due
August 17th: September Tuition is due
August 26th: Last day of School!
August 27-31st: SEE is closed to prepare of the new school year
September 1st: All programs resume! Happy First Day of School!
September 7th: Labor Day - SEE is closed for the day
October 1st: October Tuition is due

Check out some pictures:

Creating a Body Fossil

An example of a body fossil and a trace fossil

The children named this "Dino Sticky Mud"

Measuring dinosaur foot prints

Creating an Amber specimen

Another Amber specimen in progress!

I hope everyone is having a great summer! I know we are! 

Look for our next post in a few weeks!  

Have a wonderful weekend!

Joanna