A Dinosaur a Day

We are so curious about dinosaurs!  Each day this week we learned about a different dinosaur. First we read a non-fiction book, then watched a few video clips.  As a class we made a web to record all the new information we learned.  We are going to us all the facts we learned to write our own non-fiction dinosaur book next week.

On Monday we learned about the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  We learned that T-Rex walked on two feet and had a hug foot with 3 toes.  We measured our own kindergarten sized feet against a T-Rex footprint. 

Then we learned that T-Rex has up to 60 sharp teeth.  We measured the size of his mouth and counted the teeth.  We were so amazed how big a T-Rex mouth is.  A whole kindergarten class can fit inside.

On Tuesday we learned about the Stegosaurus.  First we went into the hallway to measure out how long a Stegosaurus would be. (We did this will all the dinosaurs)  Then we used our own bodies to see how many kids long that would be.  

On Wednesday it was all about Triceratops.  Everyone drew a Triceratops head with a decorated frill. Then we made three horns.  It was tricky making the horns, but all the Triceratops turned out fantastic.

Then on Thursday we were so excited to learn about the Apatosaurus.  Some scientist believe that the Apatosaurus would swallow stones to help digest the plants they ate. To show how this theory worked, half of us put just lettuce leaves into a bag, and the other half of us added rocks to our bags of lettuce.  Then we kneaded the bags with our hands.  When were compared the two sets of bags, we were amazed how much the rocks helped "digest" the lettuce leaves.

On Friday, we finished up with the Velociraptor. Because the Velociraptor is know as a "speedy thief," it was only fitting to have our own Raptor races!  

 

We learned that Velociraptors of feathers.

We also got to experience how tall each dinosaurs was.  First, we went outside and used helium filled balloons to show the height of each dinosaur.  The wind made it a little difficult, but we were still amazed at their size.  Then we let the balloons up in our classroom, the hallway and even the gym. Even though Linwood has very high ceilings, almost all the dinosaurs would bump their heads!