Monday, April 16, 2012

Dinos may be extinct, but they're alive in MY room!

Well...Spring Break has come and gone.  I wish school weeks flew by that fast.  But, no complaints here - I had a great one! T minus 22 days until summer break...who is counting? ha ha Anyways, we are in full swing learning all about dinosaurs and my kinders are l.o.v.i.n.g it! Once again, DeAnna's unit is awesome. Here is a glimpse at what I managed to squeeze in today. Shew boy, was it a lot.  I literally came home and took a 2 hour nap. ha It wore Miss E out! 
I spent a few days on this egg over spring break because my first one caved when I popped the balloon.  Oops, so this egg is take 2. It was such a great way to teach my kiddies about inferences and they loved the fact that I told them my dog found it in the backyard. I'm telling ya, Mrs. Jump is brilliant!
Here is the recording sheet we filled out. 
I also made this guy and students filled out their schema today. As we go throughout the week and learn new info, we'll add to the "new learning" section, any misconceptions, etc. For the anchor chart labels, click {here}.
Math work stations are a compilation of goodies from all over the blog world.  

1. Students are excavating bones (aka chocolate chips) from cookies and writing an estimate and their actual amount discovered.
2. Here, kiddies are surveying other students and asking them if they'd like to have a pet dinosaur. They are recording their answers on a tally chart.
3. Roll a Dino (self explanatory....ha)
4. Students are dumping dinosaurs and counting the dinos that land face up.  They record the numbers and on one side, circle the dinos with more and the other, with less.
5. Calendar Journal (not pictured)
Literacy work stations are off with a bang.
1. Students are reading a dino emergent reader, highlighting words they know, and coloring.
2. Students are cracking dino eggs, reading the words, and recording them under the correct word family.
3. Here, my kiddies are using stamps to create a prehistoric scene, coloring, and writing 2 sentences about their picture on the back.
4. Poetry journal (the poem is from DeAnna's unit)
5. Listening station (not pictured)
We wrapped up the day with this art activity. I did this last year but students glued little triangles on for spikes. You can see that post {here}. I got the idea to paint my students' fingers and stamp their hands from pinterest....but, it didn't quite turn out like expected. Oh well. Here was my inspiration.
Thoughts?  Did I come close? 

Ha ha I'll be back this week with some freebies. Happy Monday friends.

5 comments:

jadan said...

Love all your great activities! I just finished my dino unit but I would love to know where you found the dino pet graphing, dino roll and the more or less worksheet. I would love to use these for next year. Thank you for sharing your wonderful ideas :)

joan
jadan79@gmail.com

She (Sprinkle Teaching Magic) said...

No wonder you took a two hour nap! There is a lot of work that went in to prepping all this fun dino stuff for your kiddos! Your charts look amazing! I have never done a dino unit with my kindy cuties but this is making me seriously consider adding it in!

Sheila

Sprinkle Teaching Magic

Jessica said...

I teach in TN too and would LOOOOVE to do a dino unit! =) Can you tell me what standards you use so I can convince my team we can do it too? lol =)

We missed you on Saturday!!!

Jessica
Under the Alphabet Tree

Miss H said...

Your egg looks amazing! I always enjoy reading your posts. Thanks for all the great ideas!

Becki
http://littlemisshoodsadventuresinkindergart.blogspot.com/

Stephanie said...

Question: Do any of your kids yell "IT"S A FAKE EGG!" when they discover it? IF so, how do you respond? I try telling mine that it is real, but when they are persistent, I can't lie to their faces. I usually just say, "Oh, well then I guess I should just take it home and put it in the closet," which is enough to make them protest and agree to the egg's "reality" just to satisfy their curiosity of what will come out of it. :) Any other ideas?