Dino Hats (and Frog Gifts)

For our last dinosaur craft, we made Stegosaurus hats.

It's very simple. I started by drawing a Stegosaurus on a big piece of white construction paper. (I drew my template freehand, so it's very basic.) Then I cut it out with another piece of paper under it, so I had two dinosaurs. I stapled them together, one staple near the head and one near the tail.

The kids used markers and crayons to decorate both sides.

Then you just open it up by pulling the two pieces of paper apart, and put it on your head! It might need another staple if it's too big.

The kids loved them. They wrote their names on the plates of the Stegosaurus, one letter per plate. So cute!
Today was my last day with many of my kids. So sad! A few days ago I received a frog cookie cutter from one of my sweeties. So I decided to make frog rice krispie treats for their last day.

I added green food coloring to the marshmallows. For the eyes, I used cinnamon discs to make them red-eyed tree frogs, my favorite. M&Ms would probably be better, but I didn't have any. I used some chocolate frosting I had leftover in the fridge to "glue" the eyes on.

Doesn't look very appetizing, does it? But they tasted great! The same girl also gave me a frog mood ring.

I wore it the rest of the week and the kids were always interested in what color it was. Black means stressed, so whenever the kids got a little out of control I would say, "Uh-oh, my frog is turning black!" And it worked! The kids would settle down right away! (The purple color you see above means romantic. I had a heck of a time explaining that one to the kids!) Another little girl got me this cute frog notebook.

I can't wait to write notes in it! And yet another girl got me this frog made out of forks and spoons.

How cool is that? Do you think I talk to my class about my obsession with frogs too much? :o)

Dinosaur Stomp

Today's circle time book was Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp by Carol Diggory Shields.

I love love love this book. But in all the years I've been teaching about dinosaurs, I've never read it. That's because I have the tape story! Yes, cassette tape. It's very old school. I got it through a Scholastic book order many years ago. I always have my eyes out for the CD, but so far no such luck. The tape story is actually the song-version of the book and it's so fun to listen to! After listening to it while looking at the book, we had our own version of a dinosaur stomp. I found extra thick craft foam at Michaels and cut out three different dino footprints. I just drew them by hand, so nothing fancy. Then I cut them out and stuck pipe cleaners into them to make handles. I also taped the ends just in case.

See how thick the foam is?

I put some paint on paper plates and rolled out some big white paper onto the table. The kids used them just like normal stamps, but they pressed down on the feet to get a good print. And the paper stuck to the foam, so they had to hold the paper down when lifting up the stamp.

I had two kids at a time come over to the table to make some footprints.

Once it got filled up, we let it dry .

My plan was to put "Dinosaur Stomp" on it with stencils, but when I went to get the letters I couldn't find them. So I just quickly wrote "Saturday night at the Dinosaur Stomp" on it and hung it on the wall.

Not very fancy, but it's only up for a couple days. We have one more day of Dino Camp, and then I have to take everything down. It's been an exciting week!

Dinosaur Tooth Necklaces

I told the kids I went back in time and pulled some dinosaur teeth. They didn't believe me. Smart kids! I used Crayola's Model Magic to make some teeth.

I just formed it into a tooth-like shape. Then I used one end of a paper clip to poke a hole all the way through. I wiggled it around a bit to make the hole big enough to thread string through. I taped down one end of some string and put out some pony beads and cut up straws.

The kids put some on the string,

then picked out a tooth. I helped them string the tooth on because it was a little tricky. Then they added more beads and straws. I love the bright colors against the white tooth.

I made the mistake of making the teeth only one day before the craft. They weren't quite hard enough today, but we did the project anyway. I thought of keeping the teeth one extra day, but you try telling a class of dino lovers that they can't take them home just yet! So I let them wear the necklace for a picture, but then they were hung in their cubbies till the end of the day. One more day of drying should work.

These teeth wouldn't be from a T-Rex, of course. Their teeth were as big as bananas! Although some kids said they could be from a baby T-Rex. I told them they could pretend it came from any dinosaur they wanted, but we all agreed they probably belonged to a meat-eater. (See? Even though the kids knew the teeth were fake, they still make-believed with me throughout the whole project!)

Dramatic Play: Dino Camp

So I told you I'd be back today to show you our Dino Camp. It's pretty fun.

Last year I bought an inflatable Pteranodon from Amazon. This was to replace the Quetzalcoatlus I made several years ago and was pretty much on it's last leg. I wish I still had a picture of it, but basically it was made out of paper and then stuffed with paper so it was 3D. And the wings were huge compared to this little guy. But the Pteranodon is much easier to hang up and to store when not in use. So it was worth it. I also made a Dino Camp sign.

I wanted it to look like it was a banner made from fabric, but it's really poster board. I used stencils for the letters and printed out dinosaurs from a greeting card software I have, then glued them to the sign. I also used the same T-Rex skeleton from our craft today, but printed it out poster-size. So it printed on a bunch of pieces of paper and I had to piece it together and cut it out. I turned our little kitchen around and covered it with paper, then hung up the skeleton. I also put up some other pictures of dinos with their names.

The kids enjoy looking at this and guessing the names of the dinosaurs. During center time, I put out our sand table and fill it with bones. They are actually of a human skeleton that I got around Halloween several years ago. The bones were connected with rope so I just cut them apart. I gave the skull to my nephew and use the rest for dino camp.

The kids use paintbrushes to brush off the sand and carefully remove the bones.

Then they try putting it together into a dinosaur shape. (Without the human skull to give it away, they have no idea they aren't dinosaur bones!)

I also bring in my T-Rex game, which is like Operation.

The kids extract bones from rock with a tweezers. It doesn't work anymore, but it used to roar if you touched the tweezers to the metal. The kids are really having a lot of fun with everything!

And I think the Pteranodon is the perfect touch.

Right next to Dino Camp I have all my library books for the kids to read.

This is a very popular center. You can see that big claw in the picture above. That is one of those "Life Size" books. Awesome. Here is a link to it on Amazon, but I'm sure you can find it at a nearby library.
So, do you think your kids would have fun at my Dino Camp?

Dinosaur Skeleton Puzzles

We learned about dinosaur fossils today. You can check out a dinosaur fossil craft we did when we learned about the letter D here. This time we were paleontologists putting our bones together to make a skeleton. Except it was super easy. I printed out some Stegosaurus and T-Rex skeletons. (I printed them from a greeting card software I have, but you can find some by googling dinosaur skeleton coloring sheets.) Then I cut them up into 4 or 5 pieces.

The kids put them back together on paper,

and glued them down.

This is what they should look like put together:

I hung them up around our Dino Camp sign, but they will have to come down in a couple days when my kids leave :(

Shoe-ceratops

We started our Dinosaur unit today! I am so excited. I've been waiting a long time for this one. Check out our first craft:

It's a Shoeceratops, of course! (Someone found some frog feet from way back when.) I traced each child's shoe and they cut them out.

Then the kids used scrap paper and markers to turn it into a dinosaur!

I love these kinds of crafts because they turn out so different and there is hardly any prep work for me to do! Plus, the kids love making their own creations.

This next one is really long! The child's foot is at the very end on the left. He didn't do any cutting, he just glued the paper together as he found them!

I turned our Dramatic Play area into Dino Camp, but I will show you that tomorrow. Stay tuned!

End-of-Year Gift

So the end of the school year kind of snuck up on me. I knew it was coming, but in the past I didn't lose my kids until they went to kindergarten (except for a few who didn't stick around for the summer) and this year they all leave at the end of the school year. I never had to start thinking about an end-of-year gift until August. And even then, I always gave out a CD of dance songs that were my kids' favorite from the year. But I decided not to do that this year. (It was a lot of work making and cutting the jackets for each CD, plus a lot of money was spent on the CDs and computer ink.) I didn't have another idea in mind, but I knew it wouldn't be a CD. Well, all of a sudden I realized my kids leave my classroom in a week! So I went to Target on Friday and was looking through the dollar bins. My husband was helping me and I told him to look for something with which I could use a pun. (You know, like kool-aid with "kool summer" or a beach ball with "have a ball this summer." They seem to be all over the internet these days.) On the very last dollar bin we found these gift bags with oranges on them. My husband said, "Orange you glad it's summer?" Perfect! Ok, a little dorky, but perfect!

There were 2 in each pack, so only 50 cents a bag. I grabbed six packs. Then I went to Michaels and found some things to put in the bags.

I wanted summer-like things. I found bubbles, splash balls, and bouncy balls for the boys and jelly bracelets for the girls. I also found a craft for each kid. They were only a dollar. It was a wooden frame that came with three little markers. So that was a bit of a splurge, but it made my gift complete. Then I made tags with the words "Orange you glad it's summer?" and I will write a little note on the back of each one.

I really like how they turned out and it's more original than what I've seen out there lately.

 Thanks to my hubby for helping me out!!