Life with a toddler: Preschool- Dinosaurs Week 2

After a fun start to our dinosaur unit, I was excited for week two! Many of the activities were the same from last week, with a few changes and additions. Check out week one here! Little Guy is 38 months old.

During our unit, we read books at the start of our preschool time. We read several non-fiction books, like I mentioned last week. We also read several fiction books. Some of my favorites are "Dinosaur Countdown" by Nicholas Oldland, "Ten Terrible Dinosaurs" by Paul Stickland (two fun counting books), and "How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?" by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague. (We really like several of the "How do Dinosaurs..." books, they are silly and fun, and I love how the name of the dinosaurs are included in the illustrations.) Another favorite has been "Who Am I? Dinosaurs." This fun book has an egg on every page that you slide open to discover a dinosaur underneath.

Little Guy's toy dinosaurs made an appearance this week to help with some art. Little Guy dipped the dinosaur's feet into paint, then made tracks on some construction paper. There was time for imagination, too. The stegosaurus smelled the paint first to decide which color to walk in. Of course, after the footprints were made they had to be looked at closely!

Our preschool time would not be complete with some puzzles! Little Guy worked on this stegosaurus puzzle, as well as a t-rex puzzle and the big floor puzzle.

We practiced different letters this week with our dinosaur wand. I used some tacks to attach the letter cards to our felt board. I would call out a letter, and Little Guy would hit it with his dinosaur wand. The only problem was that it was harder for Little Guy to make the dinosaur wand light up this way!

This was a new activity for this week. I found these cards (through Pinterest, of course!) from the Pinay Homeschooler. The cards go along with the Dinosaur Toob from Safari Ltd. that we have. On one half of each card is a picture of one of the dinosaurs. On the other half is the name, how to pronounce it, and some basic facts about the dinosaur. It was a great find! For Little Guy, I had him match up the toy dinosaur to the card. We then talked about the name and what it ate. It was a great way to get some more information on the dinosaurs!

This was another new activity. I made counting and number cards using pictures of the dinosaurs (from our Toob). Using these actually turned into a three part process. Little Guy first put a glass bead on each dinosaur, practicing one-to-one correspondence. Then he matched the correct number to each set of dinosaurs. Finally, he put the cards in numerical order. This was great number and counting practice for Little Guy. One thing that I am learning is to make these activities available from the the first week of a unit. That way, even if we only practice it once a week, we will still do the activity two or three times before we change our unit.

For a new sensory activity we used some glass beads. We have an assortment of colors that fit well in this small tub. With pipe cleaner trees (and some playdough to hold them in place), it made a nice area for the dinosaurs from the Toob to play.

When it was time to clean up, we worked in a second activity. Little Guy had to use his tweezers to get the dinosaurs out of the tub and into the red tray. This made cleaning up more fun, and was a great way to sneak in some fine motor skills!

Little Guy chose some coloring again this week. Grandma A. gave him a dinosaur coloring book, so it was fun to look through the book and choose which pictures to color. He really enjoyed the colored pencils, and not just the fancy ones!

We also did some name practice this week. I wrote his name on an index card, then we used small dinosaur stickers to cover up the lines. We took turns completing this activity, but is was fun to look at the sticker sheet and get a variety of dinosaurs.

We continue to cork on cutting food. Little Guy cut a banana into slices to make into animal cracker sandwiches. It is great to watch him get more comfortable using the knife and figure out the best way to hold the banana while he cuts. Plus, the end product is really yummy!