Dinosaur Fun!

Oh.  My.  Word.  Teaching about dinosaurs is probably my most favorite unit of all time.  I am not sure why, but I am guessing it is because my students are always so interested in dinosaurs and they crave any and all knowledge they gain about this majestic creatures.

The last two weeks before spring break were all things dino in my classroom.  My students were so eager to learn as much as they could and it just made my teacher heart full.

We did a couple of projects throughout the two weeks.

The first one was working with our reading buddies to research a dinosaur.  I gave each pair of students (one kindergarten student and one fourth grade student) an iPad, directions, and a recording sheet.  The buddies worked together to research information about their assigned dinosaur and fill it out on the recording sheet.

The best part of this project was the fourth graders.  They were getting so excited about searching for the information.  One particular student was practically bouncing when he realized he could revise his search and get more specific information.  Ah.  Maz.  Ing.

We ran out of time with our reading buddies so I had my students do the last part on their own.  We found an image of their dinosaur on their iPad and then had them draw and label it on the back of their research paper.

I was so impressed with their artistic abilities.  I have some real artists in my room.

We also made a {almost} life-sized stegosaurus.  We would have made a fully life-sized one, but I didn't have enough room in our hallways at the school.

We made our stegosaurus in pieces and then my fabulous para put the pieces together to put him on the wall.  Our class voted and decided to name him Sam the Stegosaurus.

We wrote an informational interactive writing doing shared research about our stegosaurus.

Another fun project we did was making our own fossils.  We made them out of salt dough one day.

Then I took them home, baked them, and brought them back.  Then we painted our fossils.

While we were learning about fossils, we decided to become paleontologists ourselves.  Although, we excavated chocolate chips out of cookies rather than dinosaur bones.  I don't think I have ever seen my students concentrate so hard on something.  I think you could have heard a pin drop in the classroom while they were working.

We learned how to draw our own stegosaurus and then labeled him because that is a non-fiction text feature we are learning about.

Here are some of our literacy centers we did:

Read and Write the Room - It is always a class favorite.

Dinosaur ROAR - You can read about how to play this game here.

We were working so hard that we needed a little dinosaur snack.

You can find all these activities and more in my new dinosaur unit.