Dinosaur Dig - Tails

Day 13 of Dinosaur Dig with Mother Goose Time brought us to the subject of tails.  Honestly, I wasn't quite sure how we could spend a whole day on tails alone.  But this day was so much fun!

We started our day with the discussion question: How do you think a dinosaur used it's tail?  We had just watched a BBC Walking with Dinosaurs program on Netflix and they had seen the dinosaurs use their tails as a defense.  I think their response was something like "to hit other dinosaurs with."

Since we start our school day at the table I skipped around a little bit and we started with My Dino Tail where they boys drew self portraits of what they would look like with a tail. This is such a brilliant yet simple activity.

 Lachlan's back and tail had spikes all over.

Peter really worked hard on every detail.

Here is his finished portrait.  I think I might need to save this one to enter into the County Fair.

The second part of the dino tail lesson had us grab some scarves to wear as tails.  I put a belt on each of the boys to tuck the scarves in and off they went to play as I got ready for the concept review that was supposed to be part of our Circle Time today.

We did a concept review of the number 15.  I set out 15 paper strips or "tails" and asked Peter to put them in order from 1 to 15.  I invited Peter, with his tail and all, to come into the kitchen and put these tails in order from 1 to 15.

For the lesson Where Is Your Tail? we were supposed to ask them to move about in different ways and ask them about what it would be like to have a tail.  I didn't follow this to a T but we did discuss what it would be like to have a tail.  As they were moving about playing I brought the subject up.  Peter for instance, learned an important lesson about making sure your tail is out of the way before the baby gate closes or it gets caught.  Of course, I don't think they had baby gates in the Jurassic, but it certainly made us think, that although useful, tails can certainly get in the way sometimes.

The last discussion we had was for the lesson Word Sound Tails.  This again, is a brilliant idea to go along with the topic of tails.  We talked about the tail end of words.  Lachlan and I have spent a lot of time recognizing the beginning sounds of words but not much time on the end sound.

I sat with Lachlan at the table and we sounded out and talked about the end sound of his name and of Peter's.  I wrote out the phrase "Dinosaur is no more" on a paper.  Once we discovered the end sound of Lachlan's name is the "an" part, I added that sound to the end of each of the words in the phrase.  "Dinosauran isan noan morean".  Next I added the "er" sound "Dinosaurer iser noer moreer".  We giggleed as it of course sounded quite funny.  It was a great way to introduce this concept to Lachlan.

An InLinkz Link-up