School Time Adventures

I'm not really sure what I think of this whole blog thing anymore. I haven't blogged since Valentine's day, so I apologize if and when I do post if it doesn't seem too correlated.

A few weeks ago we went on a Field trip to the Dinosaur park in Ogden and had a lovely time.

Ever since our trip we have been reading books and talking about dinosaurs, naturally. Rue and River have been playing dino tag where they ROAR at each other as they run around. We were playing in the playland at Del Taco and 2 brothers about the same age as my adventurers came down the slide and were obliviously perplexed. 

I asked if my 2 kids had hurt their feelings somehow. The little boy said, "That little girl was speaking spanish at me." The older boy replied, "Yeah and that boy went ROAR in my face." 

I then yelled up the slide, "River and Rue can you come down here please?" They came down and I told them that these 2 boys were upset. River then explained, "We were just playing dinosaurs."

So, Rue's dinosaur language got interpreted as Spanish and River's dinosaur language was just a scary ROAR.

I read about making a simple dinosaur costume using paper plates. It was really fast, it took like 10 minutes tops. (not including any kind of painting or coloring)

This is what is looked like.......

Pretty easy, right?

This is how we made it....

Folded the paper plates in half and stapled them together.

For the last plate we stapled it on 3 times and then pulled the 2 sides of the plate over so that it looks like flaps. Added the holes for the pipe cleaner and put the pipe cleaner on for the straps. I prefer pipe cleaner over yarn because I feel it is more adjustable and will stay in that position longer.

Watch out for dangerous dinosaur attacks!

 Picture of the good dinosaurs in their nests. (Mama, Papa, and the kid)

We had some big paper (almost like butcher paper) lying around from a new shelving unit. So I thought it would be fun to create a land for the new un-frozen dinosaurs. This would have been a great project to do with at least 3 other kids. The kids could have created the dinosaur land together. Instead I tried my best to play dinosaurs with River but it wasn't the same.

I got out the markers and allowed the creativity of dinosaur land to begin!

(He is pointing to the baby dinosaur that got trampled on by other animals.)

I labeled everything River told me about in Dinosaur land. The good guys (the Papa, Mama and kid nests were drawn biggest to smallest. That was my favorite part) the bad guys, the mountain, the black food, the place to fight, the place at the top of the mountain to wash after fighting, the baby dinosaur that belongs to the bad mama and papa that got trampled on by other animals, the swimming place, the animal that died, the water to drink and the flowers.

(The bad guy dinosaurs)

(The whole dinosaur land)

This week is the week of the dinosaurs! I really wanted River to do some kind of fossil or dinosaur dig but didn't have any plaster of paris. Some people let clay harden onto the dinosaur, but I thought in one wack all the clay would come off, or some small annoying part would wedge between the feet and take forever to clean. Then my aha moment came...have it be an ice age dinosaur dig! Using water worked so well because as pieces of ice went flying I was so grateful I didn't have to sweep or vacuum up little white pieces, instead the big ice chunks went in a bowl and the small pieces just melted!

River had a lot of fun cracking the ice to get the frozen ice age dinosaurs out.

This is what we did......

I took 4 dinosaurs and froze them in their own container overnight.

Then slide out the ice aged dinosaur into a cardboard container or something 

not breakable to allow the fun to begin.

I got out an assortment of utensils from the kitchen: nut opener, garlic press, big spoons. The garlic press ended up working the best. We used a plastic container to put all the large ice chunks in.

The 4 dinosaurs now in their dry nests.