Preschool Paleontologist

Paleontologist.

That's what my little girl became last week as we opened our newest box from Mother Goose Time: Dinosaur Dig!

For our first 4 days of home school preschool, we studied paleontologists, bones, fossils, and excavation sites. 

With her name tag, I wrote her name, and she used a glue bottle to trace her letters.  She did really great! Honestly, I was surprised.  Then using a 1/2 tsp she scooped and poured sand on the glue creating a raised surface.  Once her name tags were dry, I buried them under the sand creating an excavation site. Using a paintbrush and an old magnifying glass (also from MGT), Avaleigh went digging for the bones of her letters.

Mother Goose Time also sent this really cool field guide on our Paleontologist day.

It's filled with images of different dinosaurs and their names.  I added some background to the coloring pages, like mountains, and the dinosaur's name so she could trace and color it. 

   

We used the field guide the next day while completing our STEAM station on excavation sites.  Using some shape manipulatives from a previous box, Avaleigh put together "bones" in play dough to make the image of the dinosaur.  She looked at the Pterodactyl and created what you see below in the play dough!  

On Wednesday we studied fossils.  She created her own fossil stamp and using a stamp pad she pressed her image all over the provided paper during our Invitation to Create.  She decided she wanted to imprint the purple marker into her image as well.  Stamp it all! 

Our stamping fun didn't end there though.  MGT sent us some awesome dinosaur manipulatives this  month and what better way to make a fossil than to stamp dinosaurs into play dough? So much fun.

 On Bone Day, she worked with pre-cut pieces to make fossil images.  This activity is going into a baggie and going into her "out to eat" activity bag.  Perfect for the restaurant table!

The final activity we did during our Paleontologist week was a math board game called Dinosaur Dig.  Each month there is some kind of board game and these are so perfect for preschoolers.  They're simple and don't take too long to complete so attention spans don't waver and you can finish a game pretty fast.  This also helps with her wanting to play again and again. 

In this game, we used our dino manipulatives as our pieces and moved around the board collecting bones and losing them based on where we landed.  

The challenge for Avaleigh was at the end when we compared the amount of dinosaur bones we had.  She has no problem counting, but when I asked who has more, she really struggled answering correctly. I now know what we need to work on...comparing. 

It was so much fun doing activities with my girl each day and watching her become a paleontologist.  I just loved when her daddy asked her what she learned about, she spouted,
"I'm paleontologist, Daddy."