Toddler Theme: Dinosaurs

It's DINOSAUUUUUUUUUUUUUR week!!  Which is very exciting, if you can't tell. ;)  We borrowed a bunch of dinosaur books from the library and the biggest hit was Dinosaur Farm by Frann Preston-Gannon.  The book inspired a lot of quiet indoor pretend play with all of our dinosaur figures & the farm set.  A huge blessing since it was a rainy week.  Thank you, Frann!  In one of the dinosaur reference books, we learned that many dinosaurs had scaly skin like we see on today's lizards.  That gave us an idea for a special art project.  We looked through a bunch of old magazines for green and brown pictures.  Mia had the color identifying job, and then I cut out lots of paper scales from those pictures.  Once we had a good pile established, I cut out a rough dinosaur body shape from white card stock.  Armed with a wide brush and Modge Podge, Mia attached the scales to her dino.  She completed the project with a googly eye...and a prompt bath (it's a sticky project!).  If you don't want to buy Modge Podge, you could water down some Elmer's School Glue.

To make bath time a little more interesting this week, we tossed in all the dino figures and colored the water green with bath tablets I found in the Target Dollar Spot (they have Elsa and Ariel on the front of the package if you're looking for them).  There isn't a green tablet, so you have to use both a blue and yellow one but it's a great early lesson in color mixing.      

One morning, we took a field trip to Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison.  It's free to hike up the ridge and scope out real dinosaur tracks and fossils.  If you prefer, you could buy tickets for a driven tour, but we liked getting the fresh air and walking out some sillies.  Several types of dinosaur fossils have been found in this area and they are still discovering Stegosaurus bones now.  There is a section of the wall where you can actually touch the exposed dinosaur bones.  Perhaps the coolest area, though, is the section of the Dakota hogback with visible dinosaur tracks along the surface.  These prints date back to around 100 million years ago.  They've identified several different types of dinosaur tracks and you can actually see the run patterns.  A few of the tracks are available to touch and this was a very big highlight for Mia, literally and figuratively.

To wrap up our fun week, we made dinosaur track cookies by pressing the feet of Mia's various dinosaur figures into cookie dough before baking.  To keep baby sister Millie occupied and out of trouble while we did this, I prepared a simple dino sensory bin for her -- uncooked oatmeal with buried plastic dinos waiting to be discovered.

A summary of all Dinosaur week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Played dinosaur farm (based on the book) with all of our little dinosaur figures, Took green dinosaur baths all week

ART PROJECTS: Created a scaled dinosaur collage with green & brown magazine scraps and Modge Podge

OUTINGS: Hiked up Dinosaur Ridge

SNACK: Made dinosaur tracks cookies

BOOKS: Dinosaur Farm by Frann Preston-Gannon, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by 

Jane Yolen & Mark Teague

BABY BONUS: Oatmeal sensory bin with buried plastic dinosaurs

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