Dinosaur Sensory Bin

Remember that little dinosaur obsession Eva developed two years ago?  Well it's still going strong.  It's amazing how much dino info a four year old brain can hold!  This past week Eva was pretty sick so we were home bound and getting a little squirrelly.  Hours upon hours of pretending to be dinosaurs and playing with dinosaur toys can get monotonous so to shake things up we created a dinosaur museum.

The sensory bin became a paleontology dig, filled with various dried beans, rocks and dinosaur skeletons.  (I found five different packs of two at the Dollar Store.)  Eva carefully digs them out and cleans them off.

Then she looks through her dinosaur cards (a Target Dollar Spot find a few years ago) and matches the skeleton to its info.

We also made a display that allows Eva to sort her toy dinos into groups- Sauropods, Theropods, Stegosaurs, Ornithopods, Ankylosaurs, Ceratopsians and Other Reptiles.

She also added some pictures she's drawn lately of dinosaurs.  

Now every morning, the first thing Eva does upon waking is setting up her museum.  Stop on by, she loves giving tours!

St. Patrick's Day Cards

To share our love of all that is Irish with our family and friends, we made these St. Patrick's Day cards.  Eva stamped a "shamrock" on the front using a pepper top and some green paint.

When they were dry, I added a message- Shamrocks are green, Dinos are too... Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I love you!  Eva signed her name and we taped in a picture of her posing with her favorite dinos.

We also whipped up a batch of green cupcakes (lemon cake mix with green food coloring added) to snack on when we visit Grammy and Papa for the holiday.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

May the Luck of the Irish be with YOU!

Dinosaur Roar!

You're probably wondering what dinosaurs have to do with China.  Absolutely nothing but Eva has been obsessed with them lately so we're going with it!  No sense pushing something if your child is really digging something else.  Luckily for us, the dinosaur exhibit is back at our local science museum so we spent a few hours visiting with them the other day.  Eva was thrilled that all of her favorite dinos were represented- T-Rex, stegosaurus, apatosaurus and triceratops.  She also got to meet some new dinos that are now part of our pretend play daily.  (Does your child love to pretend to be dinosaurs?  We've been speaking in roars a lot lately!)

We also made a fun dinosaur picture.  I wrapped a cardboard tube with bubble wrap and Eva rolled it in paint and then onto easel paper.

It took her a little while to get used to rolling as opposed to smearing but soon the dots began appearing.

When the paint was dry, Eva dipped dinosaur cookie cutters in black paint and stamped them onto the paper.

I love that it looks somewhat prehistoric, almost like cave drawings.

We've also been reading some of our favorite dinosaur books:

          

If you have a budding paleontologist too, be sure to check out the dinosaur activities we did last year too!

Author Spotlight

Kate and Jim McMullan

This pair of author/illustrators has produced three of Eva's absolute favorite books.  Their witty text appeals to toddlers and grownups alike and their illustrations are bright, colorful and amusing.

Two of their books go along with our vehicles theme this week.

 

(Source- Barnes and Noble)

In I Stink we get a peak at the life of a garbage truck.  The casual conversational text introduces the reader to the parts of the truck and how he does his job.  He even shares a recipe for his "yummy" alphabet soup for a little letter reinforcement (and giggles).

I'm Dirty introduces us to a backhoe loader who loves getting dirty.  He works hard to clean up a vacant lot while showing off all his cool parts.  He even goes over a little counting for some added math fun.

The duo also wrote one of Eva's favorite dinosaur books which allows us to follow along with a ferocious T-Rex on the hunt for some grub and shows that even big, bad dinosaurs need their mommies:

(source- Barnes and Noble)

The books are a blast to read and believe me, you will end up reading them over and over.

Super Stegosaurus

For our craft today we made a clothes pin stegosaurus based on the one I found at this awesome blog.  Eva chose the colors she wanted to use (who knows maybe some dinosaurs were turquoise!) and began painting.  I attached the clothespins to a craft stick so they wouldn't wiggle around as much when she was trying to paint them.

Then she painted the body that I had cut out of card stock (you need something stronger than regular paper to support the weight of the clothes pins).

When everything was dry, he got the required googly eye and the clothes pins (or his armored plates as Eva corrected me) were placed on his back.

I am thinking of putting numbers on the clothes pin at some point down the line so that Eva can practice counting in serial order but for now, he's a fun buddy to play with.