finishing up with snakes

I have to admit that the majority of our snake unit consisted of reading the books we got from the library and then 'playing' snakes with shoelaces (a game Lamb devised) but we did a few fun activities.

Lamb practised with scissors and made a spiral snake

I introduced the concept of even and odd numbers with our snake counters (pipecleaners)

We made some cardboard snakes.

The photo doesn't show it up very well but we went through some of the books we got from the library and talked about the characteristics of the different snakes (slender heads versus triangular shaped heads, spots or zigzags, sleek skin or rough) and then coloured our snakes accordingly. Several times Lamb pointed out that I hadn't blended the colours together correctly or that I actually needed a dark green while I had a light one...ahem.

Then we placed them on the continents map.

So I think I'm about done with reptiles for a while...time for something very different...

Snakes!

I know I know...first dinosaurs and now snakes!

Part way through our dinosaur unit we had a visit at our playgroup from the snake man and since then the children have been REALLY interested in snakes and lizards.

After this we found a crocodile hunter dvd at our local library featuring snakes which Lamb watched several times.

It led to using cushions as rocks for gopher snakes (shoelaces) to hide in and tying up snakes in calico bags (blankets) so they didn't 'tag' us!

We got some snake books from the library so here Lamb is reading the book and deciding what snake the white shoelace should be.

I popped the library books and a threading activity on the shelf

 And we've been using pipe cleaners (snakes) for counters with our number cards

More dinosaur activities

A few more of the dinosaur themed things we've been up to....

We made dinosaur shaped cookies.

That's Cherry's little fingers pressing the dough into the cookie cutter (Being gluten intolerant I chose a choc chip cookie recipe that works well and we squished it onto the cutter rather than a roll out dough to cut that would taste awful!)

They turned out triceratopsish...

I also tried to add a few more activities to the shelf that Cherry would be interested in.

Here she is matching some dinosaur shaped rubber bands to some colour cards. lamb matched the bands to his dinosaur breed cards.

We also did some size sorting that I got from 1+1+1=1

The highlight for us was of course the trip to the museum!

Lamb was super excited!

He raced from one skeleton to the next talking about what they looked like AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS. My children generally speak loudly but people around us couldn't help but give us that smile that says "Wow, he's really into dinosaurs huh?"

Lamb also played several of the games on this website



Being paleontologists

A key part of any book on dinosaurs is fossils; bones and footprints waiting to be discovered so we decided to relive the experience at home.

In playdough....

We made footprints

And in ice....

I popped our little (cheap) dinosaurs into a container with water, froze it then popped some more on top and froze it again so they were in layers.

I gave the winkles a couple of nails and a wooden hammer. The sunshine was helping but they would have been there for ages....so they ended up using the metal paint roller as a hammer. It was great for chipping!



New activities on our dinosaur shelves

We have updated a few of the activities on the dinosaur shelves.

Here is what the winkles have been up to....

Dinosaur pin poking

(I just drew the outline on a piece of paper which was attached to a piece of cork I got from a craft store. The pin was stored in a blob of blu-tack)

Dot stamping with a printout I got from Confessions of a homeschooler

I got these printouts from the same site as above and punched a hole in each for threading. We threaded them as a number ordering exercise as well....

And scissor practise.

I made the strips with stickers and more interesting lines so that Lamb could practise something in between a straight line and a shape (which is still too hard for him)

Dinosaur unit

While I have had lots of material to use for a dinosaur unit I hadn't planned to do one right now and then last week we went to the library and Lamb insisted we get out not one but four books on dinosaurs....from the non fiction section no less.We have spent a lot of time going through these books and discussing the different characteristics of the dinosaurs. He got out all of his toy dinosaurs to match them to pictures in the books then telling me which dinosaurs we really should buy, apparently 'must haves' in the mind of an almost four year old boy.

So Mummy got busy.

Lamb's dinosaurs (complete with a few of the 'must haves' on his list) with a little container of cubes, some red for meat and some green for plants so that we can feed the dinosaurs based on whether they are herbivore or carnivore.

Dinosaur egg spooning (Cherry mostly does this)

Some dinosaur books and breed cards that I got from Montessori Print Shop

Part of a dinosaur unit I got from the Teachers pay teachers website

Both of the children leapt into the activities with gusto but quickly they wanted to put the dinosaurs into the eggs...I had thought of this too but our little dinos don't fit!

So I gathered together a group of jars and plastic containers with different lids and popped the little dinos with it so they could put them into the jars.

Not exactly eggs but an open and close activity nonetheless and the winkles loved it!

We've got a lot more ideas so I'm excited for dinosaurs!