Joy School - Land Dinosaurs

We had another great Joy School this past week. Our host mom's topic was Land Dinosaurs. These are, of course, the most famous ones and the ones the kids were most familiar with. ie: T-rex, stegosaurus, triceratops, etc. They had fun interacting with things that were familiar to them.

Lesson:

Our host broke her lesson up throughout the morning, so it was less sitting still and listening. She taught a little bit, then would do an activity about that section, and then we'd regroup for another little 'mini-lesson' and we'd do another activity etc.

First, she reviewed the term Paleontologist, which we learned last week on our fossils unit. We talked about how if there were no paleontologists, than we wouldn't know anything about these dinosaurs.

Craft Time:

We made toilet-paper-tube paleontologists.

She had found a worksheet that had a pattern for a boy or a girl. The kids coloured it in,

cut it out,

And glued it to their tubes. (I know you can't really tell in the picture, but my son honestly did colour his guy a little!)

Lesson Time (part 2)

This was great. She had taken the time to get an information sheets on so many dinosaurs. First we focused on herbivores. We went over their body structures, what they ate, and how large they were relative to people.

Then after we learned each one, the kids would take turns looking through her box of toy dinosaurs to see if we could find the species she had taught us about.

Last, she would teach us where the fossils for the dinosaurs had been found, and we would look on her globe and find that place. Once we did, we put on a little red sticker to mark it. By the end of the lesson, her globe was well covered in stickers, and it was a great visual to reinforce with the children that dinosaurs roamed the entire earth.

Singing Time:

We sang one herbivore song to the tune of Row, Row, Row your boat.

Herbivore, Herbivore, eating shoots and leaves,

Take a bite, and chew it up,

And then spit out the seeds.

Pretty cute!

Snack Time:

Not only did she break up her lesson plans into sections, she also broke up snack into two sections. This first one was a 'herbivore' snack since we had just learned about the plant-eating dinosaurs. She had made a lovely fruit salad and scooped up a serving for each child.

But the catch was that they couldn't eat it with their hands because dinosaurs didn't use their front legs for that. They just ripped the plants off with their teeth. So we ate our snacks face first! So many giggles!

Lesson Time: (part 3)

We followed the same pattern of learning about a specific dinosaur, finding it in the box, and adding a sticker to the globe, but this time for carnivorous dinosaurs, including the world's largest ever predator, the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Snack Time (Part 2)

Here, I supposed we would eat some meat like a carnivore, since that was what we had done for the last snack, but she surprised us with a delicious dinosaur cake for a special treat!

I cannot believe that I didn't take a picture of it before it had been cut and divided out. Arg.

But here is the sheet she used to create it. Maybe it will help you imagine it.

She made the cake a pumpkin spice recipe and covered it with a caramel icing. OH MY! It was out of this world. I have gotten the recipe from her, and bought the ingredients so I can make my very own. And trust me, I'll share the results with you. This is too yummy to keep to myself.

As you can see, even our smallest Joy Schoolers approved of the treat!

Art Time:

We created dinosaur finger puppets. The kids got to choose a dino, then colour their picture. The moms then helped them to cut out the circles for their fingers. This pink stegosaurus did quite a little dance across the table, I must say!

It was a great week and it was good to be all together again. (last week two of our families couldn't come due to illness).