Dinosaur Dig - Week 1

Dinosaur Dig is right up our alley.  We have many dinosaur themed items around this house but we have gained some great additions to our collection so far this week.

Day 1 we learned about Paleontologists and received our Field Journal.  I gave Lachlan his journal with no instructions, just to see what he would do.  He loved it and started coloring right away.  Mother Goose Time provided them each with a small pack of crayons along with their journal this month.  Lachlan was quite fond of them. 

After spending some time coloring and enjoying the journals I asked them to make some observations.  I asked them to observe the dinosaurs and write down their observations.

Peter noticed that the Brontosaurus had a long neck and asked how to write it.  So I wrote it out on a paper for him to follow.

Lachlan made some observations about the Mussaurus.  He was drawing arrows up and down and seemed to be documenting their movement. 

On Day 1 we also got our Dino Nametags and MGT had a brilliant idea.  Instead of just writing their names write their dino names.  We added saurus to the end of their name to get their dino name.

 I wrote it in pencil and Peter started tracing over it with a marker. 

On Day 2 we got out our Nametags and worked on putting the letters from our name in order in the lesson called Letter Fossils.  First I made letter "rocks" out of brown paper with all the letters in Petersaurus' name on them.  Then I buried them face down in the sand we had out for the Excavation Dig lesson we had done earlier. (The Excavation Dig lesson had us dig out paper dino bones from the sand and put them together, you can see the remnants of it in the lower right hand corner of the picture.)

Peter used his brush to dig out the letters and then put them in order.  He felt quite accomplished.

Adam did some digging of his own when he discovered the towel drawer.  My towels will never be folded again.  To say he was proud of himself would be an understatement. 

 Day 3 we made Fossil Dough for the Fossil Press lesson.  This is such a cool recipe.  It is made with used coffee grounds and cold coffee!?!?  Of course salt and flour is also included to bind it all together.  Obviously with these ingredients the dough is going to have an aroma but it also has a cool texture.  It's pretty rough.  The color goes great with the fossil/dirt concept. 

 Peter used his small Triceratops to make foot prints in his dough. 

Peter played with this stuff forever.  He made a snake and an egg but he didn't want them to sit out to get hard.  He wanted to keep it soft so he could play with it more later.  I put his creations in a Tupperware container and they kept pretty well.  They got more moist and we had to add more flour.  Since we were adding flour I threw in a little cinnamon.  I wanted to see if it would improve the smell for Lachlan's sake, he didn't play with it long because of the smell. 

Lachlan made a quick "pointy egg" and called it good.  He wanted his baked to make it hard.

I have to say, it made me giggle every time I passed it.  I know he said it was an egg . . . but I don't know.  It certainly did come out of that end.  :)

On Day 4 we got out new book!  This month it is called Jurassic Jam by Maria West.  Just in case you don't recognize that name, she is the amazing dancer and choreographer behind Dance N Beats.  Now she can add author to her list of expertise. 

It's such a cute story, not your typical Dinosaur story.  It's about dancing dinos of course.  It has a fun rhythm that flows through the whole book. 

Just recently Mother Goose Time has began a relationship with Amazon and you can now buy their books.  In the past the only way to get it was through a MGT kit.  So this is exciting stuff!  Here is a link (affiliate link)