Dinosaur preschool being the big one. On Monday, February 25th, it was my turn to plan the month's preschool field trip. I'm not as cool as Ms. Frizzle, but I thought it would be fun to go to the BYU Paleontology Museum on campus. It's small enough that the kids can run around and look at whatever they like, without getting lost or too far from Mommy. But it's got enough cool stuff in it to hold their attention, with even a few hands-on, touch friendly, things around for the kids to do. And it's free. :)
I decided to make up a little scavenger hunt for the kids to do while they looked around the museum. I went online and Google searched "BYU Paleontology Museum and found a bunch of pictures of the displays that I copied and pasted onto a paper. So basically the kids would see a picture of a trilobite on their paper, and they'd look around the museum until they found it, then they would color it in with a crayon. I think they enjoyed it.
We got lucky, because a women who worked there took it upon herself to give the kids a tour and to help them find all the things on their papers. So we actually learned a lot of cool things, such as the giant sloth they have on display was found when they were digging the foundation for the Orem WalMart. Cool. She also explained what a lot of the tools in the lab area were and how the workers in the lab were using them.
Lincoln said his favorite part was the T-Rex, and Adelia said her favorite part was the giant fossilized snail. Ivan told me his favorite thing was the fossilized dinosaur poop and he didn't want me to take his picture. :)
So the field trip was a success. And of course, I felt the need to go home and turn it into a themed unit. :) Actually, Lincoln and Ivan gave me the inspiration for it. At the museum they'd gotten a little pamphlet that has a map of the displays and some cook information about each one. They thought this was the coolest thing ever. Lincoln kept trying to read it to me all the way home...and he actually did pretty well. Then when we got home, they wanted to play dinosaur museum. They went upstairs and got all their toy dinosaurs and brought them down into the family room. Then they tried using their maps from the museum to decide where to put the dinos. Well, as you can imagine, the map from the museum is not the same as the layout of our house, so they were having a hard time. :) Therefore, we decided to make a map of the room, and draw in the dinosaurs. Here's Ivan's, I thought it turned out great. (I had to draw his dinos, but he colored them.)
And so they spent several hours playing dinosaur museum. They also brought down Ivan's tool set, and pretended to work on the bones.
We also watched the Magic School Bus episode on dinosaurs. And of course we could resist the opportunity to get out the play doh and make our own dinosaur fossils. Some day when I'm really ambitious I'll do the whole plaster of paris thing, but for now just stamping them in the play doh seemed to suffice.
Also from before...
I love this chick. She was hanging out with me and coloring on a scratch paper while I folded laundry. Aaron had taken the boys somewhere, so it was just me and Del, and she was just happy as a clam to sit there and draw and chat with me while I worked. Years from now, when I'm looking back at Adelia's early childhood years, I hope this is what I remember: Her beautiful smile, the mischief in her eyes, her fluffy hair, her contented way of just being in the same room with me, her little bare feet because she refuses to keep socks and shoes on, and all the funny and adorable things that come out of her mouth. She and I, we're going to have to stick together in this crazy family of boys.
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