Dinosaur Discovery

Dinosaurs and Playdough

This year quite a few children displayed an interest in dinosaurs. One JK boy in particular his parents had said on the first day of school that he loves anything with sharp teeth such as sharks and dinosaurs. I hadn't planned on bringing out the bin of dinosaurs we had hidden away in our cupboards but when this boy was hesitant to come into the classroom on his first day, I brought them out. He was instantly drawn to them and went right into the classroom to play. I added the dinosaurs to our" chicka-chicka boom boom" sensory bin, that then became our "dinosaur" bin.

Discovering Dinosaurs
After seeing how much the students enjoyed playing with our toy dinosaurs I displayed books about dinosaurs on our science table and in our reading area. The children learned a lot of facts about different dinosaurs and how some were meat-eaters and others ate plants.

Digging for "Bones"

After reading about paleontologists and what that big fancy word means and what they do, we did a fun activity by becoming paleontologists ourselves! The children each received a chocolate chip cookie and a toothpick so they could dig for "bones" and get the chocolate chips out of cookie.

Digging for Dinosaur Bones

In our sandbox we put small paintbrushes, scrapers, magnifying glasses, stones with dinosaur prints on them, and clay formations with dinosaurs hidden inside. The students could use the paintbrushes to delicately brush off the sand when they found a fossil and use the scrapers to dig for fossils hidden in the clay.

Dinosaurs, playdough, and loose parts.

Dinosaur Eggs

Each morning the children would excitedly come into the room to see if our dinosaur/reptile eggs had hatched. We had also made some predictions about what we thought the eggs would become as not all of the eggs were dinosaurs (we also had a snake inquiry going on). We had guesses such as; lizards, birds, chickens, and even humans!

"Dinosaur Land" made with recycled cardboard, water bottles, tissue paper, paint, shredded paper and rocks.

Dinosaur Imprints in Playdough

Building a dinosaur with fossils on the light table.

Making a Dinosaur Egg experiment

The ECE in the classroom made a dinosaur egg with the whole class. She simply used baking soda, water, and green food colouring to create the egg. She formed the egg around a tiny dinosaur and left it to dry over night. The next day the egg was dry and hard.

Finding the Hidden Dinosaur

The next day after the egg had dried we had the class get together as a whole to make predictions about what will happen when we spray the egg with vinegar. The children first smelt the vinegar to guess what liquid was going to be used. The children were so engaged in this science experiment and were amazed when the egg started to fizzle away to reveal the dinosaur hidden inside!