Dinosaur Day Camp - Day Three

We continued with Dino fun on day three.  We continued reading the Magic Treehouse Book, which my daughter is enjoying.  The day's focus was on the T-rex.  We followed up the story with a couple of fun T-rex activities.  The first was to build a t-rex using this template.  Essentially, it's a paper t-rex "puzzle" that you cut out and piece together so that it can stand.  Here's my daughter creating her t-rex:

Coloring...

She decided her t-rex needed a leash, so we broke out the yarn.

Our t-rex happens to be a girl, of course, complete with blue eyes, eyelashes, and a bow on her head and tail.  Takes some of the fierceness out the the creatures, for sure!

Our next activity was similar, but this time we stuffed a two sided t-rex.  I'm so sorry, but I don't remember the website I printed the template from to give proper credit, but if I stumble upon it again I will add a link.  We printed two pictures, cut them out and stapled them together leaving a small opening for stuffing.  My daughter stuffed the dino with cotton balls and then stapled the opening shut.  Here's the process:

And the finished product!  Slightly less girly, but still with the blue eyes. :)

And the dinosaur face off!

Finally, to round out the day, we played this Build a Dinosaur activity on the Scholastic website.  Until our next prehistoric adventure...



Dinosaur Camp - Day Two

More dinosaur fun to be had!  We read some more from the Magic Treehouse Dinosaurs Before Dark book.  Then, we did some dinosaur activities.  First up, we went to this website where there a step by step instructions on how to draw a number of fun things.  We started with the dinosaur section, where my daughter really enjoyed drawing this guy:

It's a pteranodon, in case you couldn't tell. :)  She drew the dinosaurs, then decided to move on to fruits and fairy tale characters.  Not exactly on topic, but fun for her nonetheless.

She loves to draw and had no art classes at school last year (budget cuts), so I was happy to let her have at the drawing for a while.

We then made a couple of pteranodon crafts inspired by those found on www.makinglearningfun.com, which is a great resource.  Here's what we ended up with:

A pteranodon cut and assembled from a paper plate.  My daughter tired of coloring quickly. :)

A pteranodon "puppet" from a toilet paper tube.  Cute!

We also found a very cool website which has video replications of dinosaurs and what they might have looked like back in the day.  My daughter spent quite some time going through these short video clips.

Finally, I packed this lunch in honor of dinosaur camp.  We ate at the park and I surprised my daughter with a fun themed lunch.

It's a dino shaped salami sandwich on wheat bread, strawberries, cookies (to share), and a yogurt tube on the side.  Looking forward to our next day of dinosaur camp!



Dinosaur Camp - Day 1

As I mentioned, we will be homeschooling my 1st grade daughter next year.  We will not be doing "traditional" homeschooling, but rather using an eschool, or online public school.  The one we have chosen is OHVA (Ohio Virtual Academy), which is powered by the K12 curriculum.  K12 is offering themed camps thoughout the summer for various grade levels.  These are optional, but seemed like fun so we are checking them out starting this week!  The first theme is Dinosaurs, so we've been having lots of prehistoric fun!  As part of the camp, we are reading The Magic Treehouse Dinosaurs Before Dark, which my daughter has been enjoying.



For today's activities, we first made a dinosaur out of pasta.  We were inspired by this project, but we didn't use the printable template.  My daughter went out on her own and created this:

Who knew dinosaurs were so happy?  We used spaghetti, penne, macaroni, and black beans.







Next up, we made good old fashioned salt dough to make imprints, or fossils.  We used 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup salt, and 3/4 cup water.  Here's some pics of the process.

                                                       Carefully measuring ingredients.

                                      The fossil maker and her marginally helpful sous chef.

                                                                Imprinting the fossil.

Finished product.  We made several fossils with handprints and cookie cutters.  Not all of them made it to the oven because of damage by the aforementioned sous chef, but we baked some at 350 for about an hour to harden, but not to brown.  These "fossils" can then be painted, but we haven't gotten that far quite yet.  We had so much fun with the first day of dinosaur fun - can't wait for the second!

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