Digging for Dinosaurs

We've started the letter D this week and our theme is Dinosaurs.  Usually I would wait until the end of the week - or when we finish the theme to post but I thought todays activity deserves it's own post. 

As George had two friends over this afternoon I thought I would get them to dig for dinosaurs.  I had 7 dinosaurs I had made earlier with Plaster of Paris and hid them in the sand pit.

George was right in it digging away and found two within a few minutes but his two friends took a little convincing.  One friend got bored and left for the swing after finding just one, the other friend found two before he headed off to the swings.  George didn't give up and found three and kept digging and searching for the last one only giving up when he saw I had all the paint set up and ready to go.

Everyone was keen to paint the dinosaurs so the swings where forgotten and paint went all over the place, but mostly on hands.  One friend wanted purple so we experimented with mixing different colours until we got something that resembled a colour she thought was purple. 

George's friends took their dinosaurs home and these three are Georges and Graces finished Dinos

Caution: Wet Paint!

Grace LOVES to paint!!  She asks to do it every day and while I love to let her lead me in what play we do I am starting to run out of paint.

We paint with Do a Dot markers on fabric

We paint with brushes

We even put paint in water and bubbles

We paint Thomas on the fence

  

We use our hands (which is my favourite - and I'm not being sarcastic, I truly love it when she uses her hands for the tactile, sensory experience she gets while painting)

We paint at playgroup

Other things we've done which I don't have photos of or if i do there are other children in it are:

• Painting with shaving cream
• Painting with silver beet (chard)
• Painting with food (yoghurt, icing, chocolate spread etc)
• Painting with cars
• Painting with fabric
• Painting with sponges
• Painting with food dye over crayon

It might seem like we do a lot of painting but there are so many other things we can still do with paints we haven't even tried yet.  But before we do I really need to go buy more paint

C is for Caterpillar

When I started the Confessions of a homeschooler - Letter of the Week I knew I would keep it play based and child led. So when George wanted to do other things and life got busy it was the first thing to go so letter C took us just under a month to complete.  Here are some photos of what we did get up to. 

We started off letter C with a the book "The very hungry caterpillar" and some playdough play, I couldn't help putting together a caterpillar for George to find when he got home from kindy.  Grace wanted one as well so I had to make another one quickly for her but I didn't get a photo of it. 

Upper and lower case puzzle

Do a dot C page - you'll never guess George's favourite colour??

Size sorting - small, medium, and large

Playdough letter making

Cutting practice 

Poke page

Patterning

Floor mats, as usual I call out the number and George finds and jumps on it.  Grace also loves to join in and jumps on a number as well.  I also get George to put the mats in order, this time I got him to do it from 10 down to number 1.

George sorted and placed the caterpillar pieces in order from 1 to 20.

I placed the caterpillars on the leaf, and George had to count them and then find the correct number.

We made a egg carton caterpillar - separate post to come later

I put all the milk bottle top letters needed to complete this activity and no more, George then pulled out a letter and decide if it was upper or lower case then place it on the correct mat. 

Lacing

Jellybean graphing.  George had to count the caterpillars and then place the same amount of jellybeans across the graph underneath.  If he got it correct he was allowed to eat the jellybeans.  It did take in a couple of attempts on the larger numbers before he could eat his treat. 

Cutting a gluing.  George only cut out one circle before asking me to finish them for him.  He's not really into cutting but I try to get him to so some each week as he is improving. 

A long time ago I brought a book with pages to write the different letters of the alphabet.  I cut off the spine of the book and place the pages in a clear file folder.  When George writes with a wipe board pen on the plastic it can then be wiped off and the page used again.  I dug out this book this week and George loved it.

There were many many other caterpillar themed activities we completed during the last month as well as many other fun which I want to post about.  I need to get back into the habit of writing in the evenings before bed.  We've already started letter D so hope to be posting about that next week.