Fun, Hands On Dinosaur Unit Study: Week 1

Last term we began a really fun unit study on Dinosaurs which is proving to be waaay more popular than I first thought it would.  A7, in particular, would sit and listen to me reading out loud from her dinosaur encyclopedia all day long if I let her.  I don’t 😉

Making Dinosaur Dress Up

I used Bumpus Jumpus Dinosaurumpus by Tony Mitton as a fun starting point.  This has been a favourite for years and our copy is as dog-eared as they come.  We have read it so many times over the years, all five children are word perfect……in fact, I may very well be word-perfect!

I had bought some Dinosaur Colour in Craft Masks  which the little ones coloured in whilst I read:

My two cutie-pie dinosaurs:

I had also collected some Kleenex Tissues  over the past few months, which are handily green in colour and perfect for making dinosaur feet.  Using some Green Felt I cut out some dinosaur toes:

and using double-sided sticky tape I stuck them on the bottom of the boxes, making some very nifty dinosaur feet, even if I do say so myself:

I had A7 read the book out to B5:

And then we got to the business of dancing, or more accurately ‘doing the dinosaurumpus’.

Dancing the Dinosaur-umpus

I was, of course, excellent, but alas, there are no photos to demonstrate just how good I was.  A fact I’m not unhappy about in the slightest 🙂   My girls were a different matter altogether.  I got lots of photos of them dinosaurumpusing about!

A dinosaurumpus gives a sizzle…..

and a zing…

It makes you want to shout….

jump, jiggle….

and sing….

But soon the rompers grow sleepy and slow…

The rumpus calms down and the sound drops low….

The rompers drift together and tumble in a heap, till finally the dinosaurs are all fast asleep….

How to Grow a Dinosaur

We also had the book How to Grow a Dinosaur  which L13 read to them:

This was the perfect book to go along with painting their own colourful dinosaurs.  We already owned some Melissa & Doug Dinosaur Figurines which come with their own paints.  The girls LOVED this activity:

Dinosaur Puzzle

We also built Orchard Toys Dinosaur Discovery Puzzle and had fun pointing out the dinosaurs we already knew (mainly from Dinosaurumpus!).  I am hoping each week the girls will become more and more familiar with each of the species shown in the puzzle:

Dinosaur Toys

The girls also had some time with their Safari Toobs Dinosaur Miniature Replica Set and their Dinosaur Atlas:

Making a Junk Model of a Dinosaur

I’ve already posted on this but T14 worked alongside the two little ones and created what could only be an ET lookalike who had aged considerably (according to Gary, that is).  It was actually a Abandtosaurus (A, B and T -osaurus as named by its creators).  If you missed that post it can be found here, but I’ll include a few photos anyway:

It was a baby dinosaur for most of the day…

until A aged him by giving him a stick, which also stabilised him nicely and also made him look like an old age ET:

I think the week really whetted the appetite of both girls.  My plans for this unit study will go a bit deeper than simple activities.  We will be looking at Dinosaurs and the Bible, as well as fossils, digs, paleontology and lots more.

Next week I will be posting on our activities on Stegosaurus, A7’s first choice!  Feel free to have a look at my pinterest board for lots of inspiration around the web:

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