Dinosaurs

This week we are learning all about dinosaurs! We are having tons of fun. How about you?

I am using First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life as our "textbook". I use the term loosely because it's a whole lot more fun and interesting than most textbooks I ever remember using in school. It provides a great framework and helps spark the interest of my little guy. The illustrations are beautiful and captivating while the text is simple and easy to follow.

My most favorite feature of this book (and many other Usborne books, I might add) is that it is "Internet-Linked". This means that on each and every page you will find a little icon and a blurb explaining various enrichment activities you will find if you go to Usborne's designated webpage. For example, here is the page about early sea creatures:

I circled the "Internet Link" box for easy viewing. It reads, "For a link to a website where you can watch video clips of prehistoric sharks, go to..." If you go to the provided link this is what you see:

So just from this one page you watch various videos and animations, look at photos of rare "prehistoric sharks", print pictures to color, and make a model of a trilobite. Pretty cool, huh? If your child was really into sea creatures you could literally spend an entire afternoon looking up these different links, thereby expanding your child's knowledge, interest, and passion on the subject. Just awesome. There are nearly 60 pages in First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life that each contain a link to a page like this for further enrichment.

We'll be working our way through this book this week and we hope you'll join us for more dinosaur fun!

For more info on Usborne Quicklinks go here.

Update: Here are the links to all our fun dinosaur activities this week!
Dinosaur Science
Dinosaur Math
Dinosaur Arts and Crafts
Dinosaur Free Play 

Jurassic Volcano

For dinosaur week we made and erupted our very own volcano! We read in First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life that lots of volcanic eruptions may have led to the dinosaurs becoming extinct so Tommy wanted to see if he could "erupt" his own dinosaurs.

The recipe for the dough was very simple (that's the way we roll around here):

6 C. Flour

2 C. Salt

4 Tb. Oil

2 C. Water

Mix together and shape a volcano around an empty plastic bottle.

I like to set up my science experiments at the table the night before we do them. The purpose of this is two-fold: first, I'm sure to have everything ready so that we actually do it; second, it's kind of like an "invitation" that piques the interest of my little guy so that he is begging me to make the volcano and erupt it. I LOVE IT!

My "Invitation"

I know there are other recipes out there. We could have let our volcano sit to dry overnight and then paint it, but my little boy just wanted to get to the fun stuff: explosions!

We used the recipe for the Foaming Monster experiment from 50 Science Things to Make and Do to make our "lava". It's just vinegar, a squirt of dish soap, some food coloring if you want it (we chose blue lava this time), and then add the baking soda. If you put the baking soda on a little square of toilet paper, crumple it up, and then throw it into the bottle it takes a few extra seconds for the eruption to start. By the end I just let Tommy add more vinegar and baking soda directly to his heart's content. I think he made 4 or 5 eruptions total, which was awesome. Check it out. Also, at the end of this video is a clip of my baby making dinosaur noises, which is adorable.