Last week was 'D for Dinosaurs'. John John LOVES dinosaurs (remember his
dino birthday party back in December?!) so this is actually the second time we have done some dinosaur activities. It was certainly nice to have some of the materials already made. So, here is what we did this time around!
I am going to start with my favorite (and messiest) activity of the week which was using green sidewalk paint. My goal was to have John stomp around like a dinosaur and leave his foot prints. It kind of worked. The mixture I made up was too thick so it dried right away but if I added more water, you couldn't tell it was green on the patio. Oh well! John had fun. This was the first time Matthew really got to participate. I gave him his own bowl of slightly green water (mostly because John didn't want to share his!) and let him splash. He of course dumped the water on himself almost immediately. I also held him up and let him stomp around to make baby footprints, which is hard to do when their feet are still curled up and turned sideways! It was a fun afternoon but very messy and I had to give them baths immediately aftewards. If it were warmer out, I would have just hosed them down or if it was the summer, we could have jumped in the pool to rinse off.
Back inside, I had all the trays set up in our school area and the first one he grabbed was the sorting upper and lower case d's. All I did was open up the baggie with the letters and he just went to town sorting without any instruction from me. I was so excited!
We had used this stacking peg activity in previous weeks but I thought he was getting bored with them so I put them away for a while. Well, I took it back out this week and he did well with stacking some towers without me asking him to do it. I think it is helping that I have a bunch of activities out on trays for him to pick and choose instead of me handing him the next activity.
He played with his lacing dinosaurs he got from Santa. I think he pulled the string through one hole and then just played with the dinosaurs. We even took three of them to the park with us one afternoon and John enjoyed sending them down the slide one by one!
He make a pretty picture using the stamp set from Aunt Allison and Uncle Tyler. He wanted to do this twice this week. John isn't into coloring or using markers, but he loves to stamp.
I cut a D out of construction paper and had him put dinosaur stickers on it. He did a couple of the stickers (and I did some) and then he got distracted by some more interesting I guess!
I found these dinosaur matching pieces online (from
Confessions of a Homeschooler and
1+1+1=1). I have been doing these types of puzzles with John before and he usually says 'Mommy do' even though he can do them himself. Well this time he pulled the tray off the shelf and I happened to be getting Matthew's bottle and wasn't sitting at the table with John. Well, wouldn't you know that within a couple minutes I look over and he has most of the puzzles completed! So I guess the key is not to sit with John and he will do his own thing without my help!
John used different dinosaurs to make a prints with their feet. The prints ended up looking like dots and you couldn't tell they were dinosaur prints. It would have been better if we had better toys for this activity, but it was still fun. That night we gave those dinosaurs baths to clean them off. (Matthew's big ol' belly cracks me up!)
John LOVES this dinosaur puzzle and so do I. What I like about this puzzle is that it comes with little matching pieces so after you put the puzzle together, John can search in the picture to match up with the pieces. So, since John can't put the puzzle together right now, he can still have fun playing 'the game' after I put it together and it is good practice for him to take turns with me on who is going to find the next match.
While John was having his dinosaur fun, Matthew played with a lacing dinosaur, a foam letter D,...and fabric scraps since I was getting desperate and it was close by! :)
Of course we read lots of dinosaur books, played with some Meliss & Doug dinosaur magnets, had dino nuggets, dino sandwiches, etc. As usual, there were activities we didn't get to, but I will just change the theme and add them in another week!
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