Ideas for a hands-on dinosaur unit including making and studying fossils, erupting a volcano, dinosaur centers, books, dino-mite writing, and more.
For your dinosaur unit! After exploring dinosaurs and fossils, each student receives a badge as junior paleontologists. They cut them out and decorate them. The box in the middle fits a picture that is 1" wide and 1-3/8" tall. At our school, we were given sticker pictures this size, so they fit perf...
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It’s time to study dinosaurs! Here are some really great resources for
Montesori-inspired dinosaur learning activities and free printables for kids.
An in depth dinosaur unit study for budding paleontologists. Learn all about the world of the dinosaurs through books, movies, and activities.
Do you have a budding paleontologist in the house? Creating a unit study can be overwhelming. That is why we compiled this comprehensive resource list to help you learn more about dinosaurs or create a whole dinosaur unit study! We hope the following resources are helpful and useful for doing your own Unit Study at […]
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Well, class is back in session over here. At least how we do class, which is really not class-like at all. However, our more structured routine has rolled out. JUST in time for me to roll out this brand new Dinosaur Unit Study to you! Right now, our mornings are spent on core skills, loads
In this Dragons & Dinosaurs Unit Study, your middle to high school students will: Measure out the size of dinosaurs footprints Learn about fossils Read about dragons And find out what the
Spread the loveLooking for ideas for a Dinosaur Unit Study that isn’t for preschoolers? Here is what we used for ours. Dinosaur Unit Study I wanted to do a Dinosaur study with my kids ages 8 and 11 but when I searched for ideas everything seemed to be for toddlers or preschoolers. So I had… Read More »
We are right in the thick of our Dinosaur Unit Study, and my kids are LOVING IT! This printable dinosaur skeleton activity is our next hands-on activity, and I just know my crafty kids are going to really dig it (ha!). We are doing our unit studies a little bit differently this year. Papa is
An in depth dinosaur unit study for budding paleontologists. Learn all about the world of the dinosaurs through books, movies, and activities.
Today I have the next printable in our Dinosaur Unit Study series completed! This mini-unit is appropriate for kids in the 3rd-5th grades. Included are
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Cute free dinosaur printables for your upcoming dinosaur theme. These dinosaur preschool worksheets include lots of activities for kids.
Kids will LOVE these FREE Paleontologist Printables to practice math and literacy with a fossil, dinosaur, and paleontolist theme.
A dinosaur theme is a sure fire way to capture little one’s interest and curiosity. Just talking about dinosaurs with toddlers is so much fun! Our week was filled with names to learn, questions to answer and hands on activities to try. Here were our plans for Dinosaur Week: And here are the details of […]
Kids love Dinosaurs! Take a journey and learn all about them with this 4-week Dinosaur Unit Study geared toward preschoolers.
The end of the school year is beyond hard. The kids are tired of school and so are we. So how do we keep the kids learning? How about a dinosaur unit? This isn't your typical dinosaur unit because the focus is on STEM projects. I integrated math, research, writing, and science. My kids had a blast! Here are the STEM projects that we did in our unit. When the kids arrived on Monday, I decorated my door so it looked like giant palm trees. When students entered the classroom, I had a thunderstorm soundtrack playing in the background. After the class was settled, I read a letter to them. It told the students that they were on the field trip of a lifetime. Together we were going to sail around the coast of Florida. While we were sailing, a huge storm came out of nowhere. The ship rocked back and forth (give lots of details to get the kids really involved.) The letter ends with the boat running ashore and the captain is missing. The ship has a giant hole and is slowly sinking. The class works together to get as many supplies as possible off of the ship before it sinks. STEM Project 1: Build a shelter so you can stay dry. The shelter must also withstand a windstorm (hairdryer or small fan.) STEM Project 2: Our shelter is weatherproof and strong. Now we need something to eat. While exploring the island, we found a huge grove of fruit trees. The problem, there's a river between us and the fruit trees. Bigger problem: there are huge monsters living in the river. We must build a bridge to get across the river safely. Bridge must be at least 7 inches long. STEM Project 3: We made it across the river and collected a lot of fruit, but now we need to keep it dry and away from the animals living on this island. Students must build a food storage container. It must float (in case it gets washed into the river) and it must keep the food dry. STEM Project 4: Build a catapult. We are certain there are dinosaurs roaming the island. Now we must build a catapult to defend ourselves. STEM Project 5: We decided to make a break for it. Anything is better than living on this crazy island full of dinosaurs. Students must build a raft to escape. STEM Project 6: Our raft worked, but we will never survive the ocean on a raft without anything else. What were we thinking?! We must add a shelter to keep the sun off of us. We also need to add our food storage container and fresh water. Success! We made it to civilization and escaped from this crazy island of dinosaurs! I hope you will try some of these STEM projects into your dinosaur unit. I have this entire unit for sale in my TpT store if you want all of the directions in one place and it also includes all of the QR codes to make research a breeze.
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First, here are the freebies- :) Poetry month has officially ended, but we are still enjoying writing poems in class! Last week, the students came up with four Cinquain poems (good review of verbs and adjectives), chose their favorite, and wrote/illustrated it on the template below (click to grab for free): I forgot to take pictures before I left work yesterday. :( I will have to post them another time. They came up with some pretty creative poems! Next week, I will be showing the students how to write a Diamante poem. We will be reading books about dinosaurs, so I've created a template for a dinosaur-themed Diamante poem! (Click for free download.) Most of my poetry writing inspiration has come from Rachael Parlett's Poetry Resources Packet! It includes many anchor charts and graphic organizers...be sure to check it out! The students will also be doing a persuasive writing piece where they have to write a convincing paragraph about why they should have a pet dinosaur! (Click for free download.) And a few fun things... :) We did the Best Friend Writing Activity from Amy Lemons. The kids LOVED this. What a fun writing topic! This is definitely one I will be doing again! We also made our "Area Puzzles" (idea from Amy Lemons) and wrote our Biography Poems! I can't believe that it is May already! I am excited to do the Watermelon Day and Bubble Fun Day mini-units from Aimee at Primarily Speaking. Last year, I did the Watermelon Day and it was loads of fun! I can't wait to try out the Bubble Day unit! If you are looking for some fun, common core aligned activities for the end of the year, be sure to check these out! Have a happy Cinco de Mayo!
Long list of free Montessori materials found online; perfect resource for classroom teachers and homeschoolers; free materials for a variety of levels, especially preschoolers through early elementary!
Looking for fun Dinosaur Preschool Theme Activities? You will love this set of Preschool Dinosaur Centers and No-Prep Worksheets.
Try this cool hatching dinosaur eggs science activity for preschoolers with a fizzy baking soda and vinegar reaction. What could be more fun!
Ready, set, learn! This short dinosaur unit study gets you up close and personal with the world of dinosaurs. Mix and match the resources provided here to capture your child’s interest and share the basics about these prehistoric animals! Online Reading About Dinosaurs Zoom Dinosaurs: Use this online textbook to learn everything from the definition...
Hi friends! Today I want to share with you our dinosaur inquiry from the past few months! We originally had some dinosaur wonders on our February wonder chart, so we went back to those questions and I also invited students share more questions they had about dinosaurs. Here is what they came up with initially: Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? How did dinosaurs go extinct? Is it true that the dinosaurs died because it go too cold? Back then, were the dinosaurs real or was it just a story? What do dinosaurs eat? Where did dinosaurs live? Did dinosaurs live in caves? Why do dinosaurs have tails? Why did dinosaurs run? What did dinosaurs sound like? Why did dinosaurs make loud noises? They weren't brainstormed in that order, but I grouped them like that so we could look at questions that were similar consecutively. For our lessons, we first started by reading the book "What are dinosaurs?" by Bobbie Kalman. In this book we learned that dinosaurs were real but lived long ago and that no dinosaurs are alive today. After we learned this information, I had the girl who originally asked the question "Back then, were the dinosaurs real or was it just a story?" come to the teacher table during centre time and record the sentence "Dinosaurs were real but they lived long ago. There are no dinosaurs alive today." It's hard to see but it's the writing at the bottom left corner on the bulletin board! Here are two centres I put out early on in our dinosaur inquiry. First, I bought this egg at Dollarama and posed the question "What do you think will hatch out of the egg?" and had students observe and write their predictions. They loved looking for changes, especially after seeing a few cracks develop! After it hatched (it was a triceratops inside) we talked about how all dinosaurs hatch from eggs. Another centre we set out early on was this dinosaur provocation. This centre lets the students freely explore different dinosaur items and also record their observations and questions about dinosaurs. I bought the dinosaurs from Michaels. You can get the tracing/matching cards you see in the picture for FREE by clicking here on the image below: The next day, we continued to read the book "What are dinosaurs?" by Bobbie Kalman learned that dinosaurs eat plants and meat. We learned the words carnivore and herbivore. After the lesson we prepped for our next lesson by making the titles "What do dinosaurs eat?", "plants" and "meat". Then I made 2 eggs and printed the herbivore and carnivore signs. I also printed the herbivore and carnivores that were in "What are dinosaurs?" and "First Facts: Dinosaurs" by DK Publishing (that I planned to read the next day). The next day, we put the chart pieces up on the whiteboard and read the pages about what dinosaurs eat in "First Facts: Dinosaurs" by DK Publishing. As we read the book, we sorted the dinosaur cards on to the correct egg. We also went back to the "What are dinosaurs?" book and re-read the pages that had information on herbivores and carnivores ands sorted the corresponding dinosaurs on those pages as well on to the egg. Here is the finished chart: (this activity and the map activity below was inspired by @playexplorelearn on Instagram!) The next morning, I set out this invitation to sort dinosaurs based on what they eat. I left out the two books we read to make our chart the previous day as a resource and our completed chart was also on the bulletin board for them to reference! Next, we looked at the question "Why and how did dinosaurs go extinct?" First, we watched the video "Where did the dinosaurs go?" by Pink Fong on YouTube. We watched the video twice and then the students recalled the steps to me about how the dinosaurs went extinct. I wrote each step on a different whiteboard. Then at centre time, students volunteered to record the steps and draw a corresponding picture (if they wanted to) so that we could display the steps on our bulletin board. Next we explored the question "Where did dinosaurs live?" We read pages from "Dino Encyclopedia" (I can't remember the author, sorry!) and "You Can Be a Palentologist!" by Scott D. Sampson to learn that dinosaurs only lived on land (those other creatures that flew or lived in the water were flying reptiles or ocean reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs! Who knew!) but they lived on every continent. I drew up a big map on poster paper and told them that we will be painting it together and then adding dinosaur stickers to show our new learning. First, students were invited to show their new learning about the world map by painting one. If they were able to paint the map correctly (green for land, blue for ocean) then they were invited to come and paint on the large collaborative map. We projected a large world map on the projector so that students could use that as a reference when painting. Here is some of my girls adding to our collaborative map! After we painted the map, we also made labels for the continents, the title and the writing piece to show our new learning. The next day, we glued the continent labels as a class and also added the dinosaur stickers whole group. And here is the completed map and corresponding title/writing: I got the stickers we used for the collaborative map at Michaels. The next day, I also let the students add mini dinosaur stickers to their original maps! I bought the mini stickers at Walmart. I started with a limit of 10 but I realized not everyone made a map so increased the limit to 15. These tiny stickers are great for fine motor development! Here is a sample of a finished map! I had some requests to share the printable for this activity so you can click here or on the image below to download it for free! Next we investigated the question "What did dinosaurs sounds like?" We watched these two videos: and we learned that scientists think dinosaurs did not roar like they do in movies like Jurassic Park. Instead they think they made a hissing noise. Then the girl who originally asked the question came to the teacher table at centre time and wrote her new learning to display on our bulletin board. It's hard to see but it's the top right writing piece in the picture below: Another centre I put out was this story making centre! Students were invited to make a dinosaur story with play dough and loose parts and use ChatterPix to record it. They LOVED this activity! On the last day, I wrote some of the remaining questions on chart paper (Did dinosaurs live in caves? Why do dinosaurs have tails? Why do dinosaurs run?) and we used google and our own inferencing to come up with the answers. I don't have a picture of this... sorry! To consolidate our learning, we also made these non-fiction dinosaur books! This was a great guided group for my higher writers. First we made our cover page and talked about titles, authors and illustrators. Then we learned about table of contents and how it helps us find information in a non-fiction book. We wrote our learning on each page, added a title and went back and added each new topic to our table of contents. It took about a week to complete but it was worth the time! Next time I think I'll start with less pages in the book though, especially for our first book! Here are some other books in case you are interested in looking! They used our bulletin boards as a reference when thinking of facts to include in their books which made our bulletin board more interactive than usual which I loved! If you are looking for these non-fiction book making printables, you can find them in my "Inquiry Writing Templates for Kindergarten" pack on TPT. You can click here or on the image below to see what else is included! Here is the finished bulletin board again: We had some amazing questions come up during our dinosaur inquiry (see below). We recorded them but the kids were losing steam with this inquiry and our caterpillars arrived so we switched gears without exploring these questions. I just wanted to share that because it's ok to not explore every question! Don't beat yourself up if you can't find the time! We can only do what we have time for :) That's it for our dinosaur inquiry! I hope this post gave you some ideas if your students have similar wonderings or are interested in dinosaurs too! - Yukari
Your students are going to LOVE using this dinosaur pick and color printable in your early childhood classroom!
What happened to the dinosaurs and how does that fit in with the Bible? Let's take a look and answer some common questions that kids (and adults) have.
Dinosaur theme day is a great opportunity to allow students to learn and have fun. Watch your little paleontologists rock it!
We have lots of worksheets for your dinosaur unit.Check out our collection of dinosaurs worksheets below and click on any of the images to view and print out your copy.Dinosaur Birthday Color th
This free printable Dinosaur Letter Recognition Activity is a fun way for preschoolers to practice naming capital and lowercase letters.
A cool idea is to put Dinosaur footprints leading to the party area. Check out the following free Dinosaur printable footprint (it's best to print on ...
FREE Creation Based Dinosaur Lapbook and Unit Study
Montessori-inspired cards and fun, interactive lapbook make learning about dinosaurs hands-on and fun.
Cute free dinosaur printables for your upcoming dinosaur theme. These dinosaur preschool worksheets include lots of activities for kids.
