More Dinos!

Hello family and friends!

This was a really fun week in the Aalva class! Even though our schedule was off with the weather delays, we were still able to get a lot done (although we had some kids pretty upset about no snow!). After reviewing our list of what we wanted to learn about dinosaurs, we realized that we've covered the majority of our questions. We've really learned a lot about dinosaurs over the past 3 weeks!

One of the big questions asked at the beginning of our study was, what do dinosaurs eat? We found tons of information about this from our library books. We divided dinosaurs into 3 categories: carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. We spent some time going through our books and talking about each dinosaur specifically. We focused mainly on what they ate, where the probably lived, and their size. We also pulled out some magazines and cut out different pictures of meats and plants. After cutting, we divided them into categories and then glued them to posters of the different types of dinosaurs. We learned that even though the T-Rex was the biggest meat eater, the herbivore dinosaurs were actually the biggest in size! Most of them dwarfed the T-Rex and other meat eaters. We also learned that many of these dinosaurs were extremely smart and used a lot of skill when hunting for food. We learned that most of the plant eaters had to be large in size so that they could eat leaves from the tops of trees. The kids even turned some lunches into discussions of whether they were having a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore lunch day!

Another big question the kids had was, why did the dinosaurs become extinct? We spent some time talking about the word "theory" and what it meant. We concluded from our readings that there are two main theories as to why the dinosaurs became extinct. One theory is that a meteorite hit the Earth, causing some earthquakes and volcanoes. Of course the kids thought this idea of volcanoes was awesome! We decided it would be fun to make a little volcano of our own. We talked about the fact that volcanoes have lava inside them and, with pressure and a lot of chemical reactions, the lava is forced out of the top. We decided to do a little volcano experiment to go along with this. We spent some time making dough to mold into a volcano. We took an empty soda bottle and, after mixing up our dough, formed a mountain of dough around our bottle. We placed it in a large pan covered in sand. After letting our dough dry for a day, we made our own volcano explosion! We filled the volcano with some warm water, food coloring, dish soap, and baking soda. We then poured vinegar into the bottle and watched as lava came bubbling out of our volcano. The kids were hilarious. So much excitement!! We talked about the fact that baking soda and vinegar make a chemical reaction together that causes a lot of pressure and bubbles (kind of like a real volcano). I'm convinced that this was the highlight of their school week. It was pretty awesome!

The second main theory of dinosaur extinction is ice. We talked about the idea of the Earth becoming very cold and icing over. We discussed how this would effect all types of life, even our plants, trees, and bugs. We put some dinosaurs in ice and froze them overnight. We then let the kids use tools of their choice to excavate the dinosaurs from the ice. It was basically a wet cold mess, but they loved it! We even saw some great team work. Some kids realized that certain tools worked better than others for chopping up the ice. When they were done, they were quick to share their strategy with others who were still working. Once we got our dinosaurs out of the ice, we figured out which type they were and discussed their size and food preferences. I wish I could have captured some of their faces when they finally excavated their dinosaur...they were priceless!

We've had a really fun time exploring dinosaurs and we've learned a lot! For next week, we will be focusing on Purim. We'll be telling the story of Purim as well as doing some activities based around the holiday. On Thursday (March 5th), the kids are allowed to dress in costume. They may wear any type of costume they choose. We only ask that they don't bring weapons along with these costumes. I'm really looking forward to diving into Purim and learning more about it myself!

Approaches to Learning:

Reason about events, relationships, and events.
Demonstrate growing ability to predict possible outcomes based on prior experiences and knowledge.
Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
Try to solve problems encountered in play.

Social & Emotional:

Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following directions.
Participate in group life of class.
Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
Develop friendship with one or two preferred children.
Express fears and concerns to familiar adult.

Language & Literacy:

.Complete a thought or idea when communicating with others.
Classify objects and information by observable attributes into predetermined categories.
Begin to use classroom resources such as books, charts, photographs and graphs to gain information about topics of interest.
Contribute to small group or whole class stories, rhymes or poems.
Begin to understand the relationship between oral language and written language.
Contribute to small group or whole class dictation activities.

Mathematics:

Sort and classify objects by one attribute.
Identify the positions firth through tenth using concrete objects.
Represent simple joining and separating situations through 4.
Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
Investigate solutions to simple problems.

Exploring herbivores and carnivores...