Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs!

January 2014

January was my first time teaching the our co-op. I got to choose my own theme and went with dinosaurs! I had a lot of fun putting together activities for the kids to do. I taught once each week, so these are some of the highlights:

Assembling playdough volcanoes (which we later filled with red food coloring, baking soda and vinegar)

I think we ended up exploding the volcanoes 3 or 4 times each. HUGE hit.

Matching dinosaurs to their fossilized footprints/imprints (made using baking soda clay)

The dinosaurs and their matches

We also made fossil cookies by smashing some dinosaurs into cookie dough:

They kept their form really well, even after baking:

Several of the kids weren't fans of the cookies since they weren't super sweet.

Oh, well. More for me! (They tasted like shortbread. Delicious).

We also hunted for "fossils" in chocolate chip cookies:

The kids decided the chips were fossilized dinosaur poop.

Why not.

And we assembled dinosaur skeletons using various kinds of pasta:

This was one of their favorite dinosaur activities

Of course, the best part was digging for fossils! I found some dinosaur skeletons at the dollar store, used this recipe to make the plaster mix, then threw some tools and goggles in our kiddie pool and set them loose. (Would highly recommend doing this outside if possible. Sadly, it was around 15 degrees this day so we were stuck inside):

Paleontologist Seth

It was definitely a little crazy trying to keep all five kids interested and focused, but I think they had fun and hopefully learned something! 

I also let Seth and Catherine have some fun popping "dinosaur eggs" (balloons with tiny dinosaurs inside):

Dinosaurs are a LOT of fun!