Bones, Bones, Bones

 

 

What's on Our Shelves?

This week we're moving from dinosaurs and fossils to bones (not such a huge leap). M has been asking a lot of questions about the bones in our bodies, so I thought this would be a fun theme. I'm trying not to get too technical (she's not even 3 yet....), so I split the activities between bones/anatomy/doctor theme and things related to the letter b (I'll update with a link when I get that post done). We also wrapped up a few things from last week's Dinosaur Unit.

Practical Life

How do we stay safe?
We spent some time talking about bones in general - why we have bones, what they are used for, and how to grow strong bones. We got a couple of great books from the library about bones that were on just the right level for M's interest (The Bones You Own by Becky Baines and Bones by Stephen Krensky). We talked about how some bones (like your rib cage or skull) are used for protection. My husband happened to order a toddler-sized hard hat right at the same time that we were discussing this, and it was perfect timing to talk about the importance of wearing helmets.

Dinosaur Eggs
This was a carry-over from last week's Dinosaur Unit. The weather was awful, and the humidity kept these fossils and the dinosaur eggs from hardening properly for days.

M used her garden tools (mainly the trowel) to crack open the eggs and find the dinosaur figures inside. We talked about some different ways to crack the eggs open safely (I didn't want her to accidentally smash her hand), and talked about how real paleontologists would need to be extremely careful not to damage the fossils inside of the rocks.

After she had successfully excavated all of the dinosaur remains, she needed to clean the "bones" to send them to the museum. (It helped that we had been reading the book How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland, which explained in great detail all of the steps from discovering a fossil to putting it on display in a museum.) She started by carefully brushing the dirt from the dinosaurs with a wet paintbrush, but decided that it would be more efficient to dunk the dinosaurs in the water cup for a quick bath.

Cutting and Gluing Practice
M hasn't shown any interest in this yet, but I think she'll probably give it a try before the end of the week. I took the blank skeleton image from the Nomenclature Cards and cropped it into several parts. I added lines and cut the page into two strips (you can copy/print the image below). The idea is that M can cut out the body parts, assemble them into a skeleton, and glue them onto the paper.

Sensorial

Matching Fossils
Like the dinosaur eggs, the fossil impressions didn't dry as quickly as I had hoped. When they were finally hardened, M enjoyed looking at the impressions left by the different ocean creatures and dinosaur footprints. She matched the figures to the impression they made, and compared the imprints on the different fossils.

Visualizing Bones in Color
I printed a giant life-size (toddler-size) skeleton (the pdf can be found under the "Activities/Teaching Resources" tab) laminated and cut out the pieces, and taped them together with packing tape. We laid this out on the floor so M could compare the size of the skeleton to herself, see which bones were the largest and smallest, and color the different bones with dry-erase markers. I later taped the skeleton up on the wall with painter's tape so she could continue to go back and color it whenever she wanted.

Dancing Bones

M absolutely loves to dance, so of course we had to talk about how bones and the joints between bones allow her to move her body in different ways. I printed, laminated and cut out this mechanical skeleton. I punched holes at each of the joints, and showed M how to use brads to attach the bones together to build her mini-skeleton. She had a blast moving his arms and legs so he could dance with her. Her "buddy" has been on several car rides, and conveniently "bends" to fit into her purse!

Mystery Bag
In an effort to get into more of a "rhythm" with our days, I tried incorporating a form of "Circle Time" to get us started after breakfast. We looked over the calendar, talked about the weather, and then pulled out some objects from a bag so M could try to figure out what we would be exploring. Obviously this "guessing game" will only work at the beginning of the week (assuming I stick to the same theme for a whole week as I plan to). I'm hoping to continue rotating out objects, and she can try to guess what the objects are (like a Mystery Bag).

Here she had pulled out Skeleton Nomenclature Cards and a dog bone from the "Mystery Bag."

Language

3-Part Cards
I downloaded these free Skeleton Nomenclature Cards from Montessori Workjobs. I backed the cards on colored paper and laminated them. I didn't back the last set of cards I made (dinosaur cards), but decided that these will probably (hopefully?) get used again when M is older, so I wanted to make this set a little nicer and more durable.

So far, M hasn't shown much interest in actually using the 3-Part Cards, except to flip through them and look at the pictures. I attempted a 3 Period Lesson with a few of the more basic cards (skull, rib cage, hand bones, etc.). She liked the second phase - pointing out the bones when I asked - but lost interest when I asked her to name them back to me.

I read through the list of Seven Ways to Use Classified Cards from Montessori Print Shop, and decided that an "I Spy" type game would be fun. She enjoyed this a lot more than the traditional 3 Period Lesson or matching the cards. We set out her Mechanical Skeleton and a pile of the labeled nomenclature cards. She would look at the picture, I would say the name of the bone she was looking for, and she would point to that bone on her skeleton (and sometimes on herself too).

Math

Doc McStuffins Graphing
Doc is second only to Mickey in this house, so M was ecstatic that I found some Doc McStuffins-themed printables for this week. This is the same counting/graphing activity that we did last week with dinosaurs, but I switched up the counters and the new characters were enough to keep her interested.

Tracing Shapes
The Doc McStuffins Tot Pack from 1plus1plus1equals1 also had this shape tracing printable. M hasn't shown a lot of interest in tracing shapes or letters yet, but she likes to name the shapes and count the number of sides and corners to compare different shapes. The fact that this had Doc McStuffins characters guaranteed that it would get used at least a little.

Linking Up With:

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Fun with Dinosaurs!

What's on our shelves?

M has been asking a ton of questions about dinosaurs lately. It all started on a long car ride home from Florida a couple of weeks ago. We heard a train pass by, which reminded her of the show Dinosaur Train. She laughed and said that was probably not a train for dinosaurs, to which I responded, "Probably not... especially since dinosaurs are extinct." Confused, she asked, "Why are the dinosaurs stinky?" And that's where the dinosaur obsession began.

Since that conversation, we have discussed various theories for why the dinosaurs went extinct, looked at pictures of many different types of dinosaurs, checked out a dozen dinosaur books from the library, and played lots of dinosaur games.

Here's what we've been up to:

 

Practical Life

Carrying Dinosaur Eggs
This idea came from Oh! The Things You'll Know. I put a masking tape line across the floor as a "balance beam" for M to walk across while carefully carrying the dinosaur eggs on a large spoon. She wasn't very excited about carrying the eggs, but had a lot of fun finding different ways to walk, run, and jump back and forth across the masking tape line.

Dinosaur Lacing Cards

M had so much fun with the lacing cards I gave her last week, so I made some dinosaur themed cards. These are simple clip art images that I drew shapes around in Microsoft Word. I laminated the shapes and punched holes around the perimeter.

Dinosaur Bath and Polishing Rocks
These were supposed to be two different activities, but M decided that they should go together. The idea was to use the sponge to give the dinosaur a bath, and to use the scrubber brush and towel to clean and polish the stones.

 

Instead, after polishing a few stones, M decided that the stones were actually dinosaur eggs, and needed to be protected. She took the large dinosaur figure from the bath tray, and used the sponge as the nest for the "eggs." The mommy dinosaur counted all of her eggs and protected them while she waited for them to hatch. I think her activity was way better than mine!

Sensorial

Matching Dinosaur Footprints
I had a bunch of plastic dinosaur figures, so I decided to take a few and dip their feet in paint to make footprints. I chose four dinosaurs that would make different footprint patterns. I used white paint to make footprints across the black construction paper. M can try to match the correct dinosaur with its footprints.

Sorting Dinosaurs
3Dinosaurs has an awesome set of free printables with a little bit of everything. These size sorting dinosaurs were a hit - she decided that the smallest dinosaurs must be the babies, the medium-sized dinosaurs were the mommies, and the largest dinosaurs were the daddies.

Play-doh Dinosaurs
My mom found some old dinosaur cookie cutters, and I threw in a rolling pin and a play-doh knife. M still has some trouble pressing the dough flat enough to be able to cut the shapes by herself, but she's definitely getting better at it!

 

Dinosaur Prints
This was not a success (yet), but I thought it was such a fun idea that I would include it anyway. I attempted to do the Dinosaur Print Painting activity from Montessori Mama, but I couldn't find the thin styrofoam she was talking about. I decided to try using floral foam, but it was way too textured and the paint just seeped into the crannies when I tried it myself. I'm going to try this again if I can find some better materials.

Dinosaur Sensory Bin
This sensory bin was so much fun!! Little Bins for Little Hands did a similar sensory bin, but I decided to fill the bin with potting soil and stones instead of baking soda. I filled a small plastic bottle with warm water, then dropped a small plastic shot glass filled with baking soda into the container. At first I gave M a pipette to add drops of vinegar, but it wasn't enough of a reaction. I poured about a quarter of a cup of vinegar at a time into the measuring cup, and let her pour the vinegar into the volcano to make it erupt. She was in love with this, and kept asking to add a little more to do it over and over again. She was a little nervous for the dinosaurs, and asked if they were going to die, so we moved them to a small "island" on the other side of the bin.

 

After at least 10 volcanic eruptions (and as much vinegar as I was willing to use), we took the whole tray outside for some more exploration. I gave her a divided tray with some cleaning materials, and some tools for digging (shovel, rake, tweezers, and small cups). She dug through the remains to find the dinosaurs and "eggs" (stones) and cleaned some of them. We realized that there was still baking soda in the bottom of the volcano, and that we could use the small cups to scoop some of the liquid from the bin and pour it back into the volcano for mini eruptions.

If it wasn't so hot outside, she probably would have played with this for a very long time. We finally brought it all back inside (after dumping most of the dirt outside), and cleaned up. She finished up by polishing a few of the "dinosaur eggs."

Language

Dinosaur 3-Part Cards
I printed these cards from the 3Dinosaurs Dinosaur Pack. Looking back, I wish I had printed more realistic pictures of the different types of dinosaurs (these are cartoons), but M enjoyed matching the pictures and hearing the names of the dinosaurs. She also tried to match her plastic dinosaur figures with the pictures on the cards (easier said than done!).

Dinosaur Stories
M has a couple of Melissa and Doug sticker books with the reusable cling stickers and multiple background sheets. I pulled out all of the background sheets from the two books, punched holes in the top of the pages, and bound them all together with key rings. She can take the background sheets off the rings if she wants to lay out multiple backgrounds together (one set has rooms in a house, and the other has different landscapes).

She told me stories about the dinosaurs that were living around the lake as she moved the stickers around on the background.

D is for Dinosaur
This D printable is from Confessions of a Homeschooler. M filled in all of the circles with round foam beads. I wish I had printed one with a lower case "d" since we have been working with the lower case alphabet so far.

Dinosaur Books
We went to the library and checked out about a dozen books on dinosaurs and bones. I was impressed by the number of good children's books they had available. We got a nice mix of stories, reference books, and easy readers.

 

Mathematics

Roll and Count Dinosaurs (Graphing)
This was another printable from the 3Dinosaurs set. M played this several times by herself, and then showed her dad how to play when he got home from work. She liked counting how many times she had rolled each dinosaur, and keeping track of which dinosaur had been rolled the most or least number of times.

Measuring Dinosaurs
I found a couple of larger dinosaur figures at Walmart, so I threw one of the large figures and a couple of her smaller figures on a tray with a ruler to compare the sizes of the dinosaurs. M loves measuring things (she has her own small measuring tape now), but she doesn't really know how to read the ruler yet.

Science / Cultural Studies

Dinosaur Eggs and Fossils
I followed the directions on Projects for Preschoolers to make these dinosaur eggs. I mixed dirt, flour, salt, sand and water to make a kind of dough, and then wrapped the dough around a few of M's small plastic dinosaurs to make an egg shape. These are still hardening on the counter, along with a few "fossils," but I think they will be a big hit.

I plan to hide the eggs around the outside of the house, and let M find and collect them in her gardening bag. Then, I'll give her a tray and shovel to crack open the eggs and "hatch" the dinosaurs.

I pulled the plastic ocean animals out of the dough after it hardened a little, and I will hide those fossils around the house as well (assuming that they seem stable enough to not break). I'll put the figures that I used in a small bin and she can try to match the imprints with the animals.

Check out more fun Montessori ideas at the Montessori Monday Link-up!