Nursery Rhymes and Fun Times: d is for dinosaur

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

d is for dinosaur

Last week did not go as planned-- but I suppose that's life, right? Jonathan did develop croup and when we went into the doctor they found out he had a double ear infection as well. He was really dragging and wasn't so interested in activities. So, we only focused on dinosaurs last week. I took hardly any pictures- sorry!

Books

Since Jonathan was sick, we read lots of books! So this post will be pretty heavy on dinosaur books.

Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff

This was the longest book we read and Jonathan did surprisingly well sitting through the story. It's an early reader about a boy who goes to a museum and a dinosaur follows him home. They have adventures strolling through the city and meeting policemen and playing hide and seek. Jonathan brought this book to daddy several times to have daddy read it to him and he generally sat through most of the book.

How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen

This is the first book in a very cute series that is designed to teach children good behavior and manners. This particular story is about good bedtime behavior. Misbehaving dinosaurs try different tactics to delay bedtime. In the end, however, the dinosaurs hug and kiss their human parents goodnight. The story is cute and humorous and reinforces a good lesson. Jonathan enjoyed it so much that we ended up checking out How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? and How do Dinosaurs Count to Ten?

Dinosaurs, dinosaurs. by Byron Barton

This book is a great introduction to dinosaurs for toddlers. The bold pictures and clear text teach toddlers about different dinosaurs and focus on main features such as size and appearance: dinosaurs with horns, dinosaurs with spikes, etc. It ends with dinosaurs going to bed, which also makes the book suitable for bedtime. Jonathan liked this story, and we read it a few times. But he enjoyed some of the others better.

Dinosaurumpus by Tony Mitton

We've really enjoyed some transportation books written by Tony Mitton so I decided to check this one out as well and it was a definite hit! Mitton's rhymes introduce different dinosaurs as the rumble and dance across the pages. There's one point where the T-Rex comes bursting into the scene that I thought might turn out to be scary- but it ends up being fine! This is a great book to get your toddler moving and like Barton's book, has the dinosaurs settling in to sleep at the end of the night. This was quite the hit for Jonathan- even being sick he had fun with this book!

Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs! by Sandra Boynton

This is a book that daddy picked for Jonathan and Grace. We've loved Sandra Boynton books in the past and this one is no exception. It is filled with colorful, fun-loving dinosaurs and teaches children about opposites. Both Jonathan and Grace really had fun with this book!

Sensory Bin

I made our first sensory bin- I filled the bin with oatmeal and black beans and threw in some dinosaurs we received from a friend. I gave Jonathan some cups and measuring utensils to play with, spread out a plastic tablecloth to catch the mess and let him go at the bin. He loved it-- it occupied him for about an hour!

Fine Motor Skills

We worked more on lacing . We laced a dinosaur card I printed out from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week curriculum. (COAH)

Letters

We also did a dinosaur letter match from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I made letter disks using the caps from gallons of mlk. He did it a few times, but would get the letters turned upside down- the "u" and n" looked a lot alike.

That was it for the week- but this week we've been able to do more- so stay tuned!