Dinosaurs

Phew, finally a moment to post about the dinosaur lesson.

Objective:
To help students learn to identify differences and similarities in things (different/same). Also implementing the number 3, letter D, color green, triangles, and dinosaurs.

Gathering activity:
For my gathering activity I had a bucket with rice for each child with a plastic dinosaur skeleton buried in the rice for them to dig up. (I found the dinosaurs at Dollartree two to a pack, too perfect to pass up!) Each child used a plastic spoon to dig for their dinosaur. Once they found the dinosaur they could use the magnifying glasses to look more closely at it or bury it again and trade with another student. This activity went quite well, all the boys seemed to enjoy it and I don't believe any of them ate the rice.
Welcome:
We went through the calendar and weather, then I introduced the number 3, triangles, and the color green.

Blue Book project:
For the blue book each student was given a paper with a green capital D printed on it. I showed them when the D was turned on its side it looked kind of like a dinosaur back. They were then given green triangle of varying shape and size to glue on and create a Dinosaur. I will admit most of them did not look like dinosaurs but the kids still had fun gluing on the shapes. The picture below is the sample I made.
Singing time:
For singing time we sang the following song to "The Wheels on the Bus" tune:

All Around The Swamp
The Pteranodon's wings went FLAP,FLAP,FLAP,
FLAP,FLAP,FLAP,FLAP.FLAP,FLAP
The Pteranodon's wings went FLAP, FLAP, FLAP
All around the swamp.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex went GRRR,GRRR, GRRR,
GRRR, GRRR, GRRR, GRRR, GRRR, GRRR,
The Tyrannosaurus Rex went GRR, GRR, GRR,
All around the swamp.

The Triceratops horns went POKE, POKE, POKE
POKE, POKE, POKE, POKE, POKE, POKE,
The Triceratops horns went POKE, POKE ,POKE,
All around the swamp.

The Brontosaurus went MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH,
MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH,MUNCH, MUNCH
The Brontosaurus went MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH,
All around the swamp.

The Stegosaurus tail went SPIKE, SPIKE, SPIKE,
SPIKE, SPIKE, SPIKE, SPIKE, SPIKE, SPIKE,
The Stegosaurus tail went SPIKE, SPIKE, SPIKE,
All around the swamp.

I was kind of losing their attention so we did head shoulders knees and toes and moved on.

Lesson:
For the lesson I had a bag full of green items that each student took turns picking out. I was hoping to talk a little about how the items were the same and different but for the sake of time I moved on to dinosaur concentration. This ended up being a perfect way to discuss same and different while keeping their attention.

Snack:
For snack I had three items they could choose from, string cheese cut into thirds, pretzels, and sugar snap peas with water to drink. They could then choose whether they wanted their snack to be all the same or different. At first none of them wanted the sugar snap peas until I showed them what was inside. It was very cute to see some of them try it even if they ended up not liking it.

Story Time:
While they ate I read them One-O-saur, Two-O-saur by David Bedford.

Free Time:
The kids were pretty restless at this point so I let them have free time. They seemed to do well at free time, though I did have a little trouble getting them to start cleaning up, even when I sang the clean up song. Perhaps I didn't give them enough time for free time because it was almost time to go.

Craft:
For the craft I gave them each a dark piece of paper and drew a dinosaur with Elmer's glue on the page (sorry for my crude artistic interpretation of a dinosaur) The students were then given macaroni and spaghetti noodles to glue on the page. The picture below is of E's dinosaur. I think he spent more time sword fighting others with the spaghetti noodles then doing his picture.
I was hoping to snap a lot more pictures than I did. The time went really quickly and I barely had time to pick up the camera and take this picture of all the boys in their green and dinosaur shirts.
EM, J, T, EW, G, P

All in all it went really well. Cute group of boys!