Dino Day!

Is that a dinosaur???????

Yes it is, and we dug it up in our backyard (well at least is LOOKS like a dinosaur!)

 Today we had Dino Day at our house, and it was FABULOUS!

I had a very good friend (that I get to see once a year) and her two boys over today.  She is a teacher, like me, and loves all of the creative juices so I thought I would plan a special day. 

Miss.-3yr-old is getting really good at her letters, but D has been tricky for her, so we did a lot of "D" things as well.

Lunch was family style and served in a fun way.  I called it "Dippin" Lunch.  Each of the 6 food items was accompanied by a compliment dipping sauce and they were placed adjacent to each other in an ice cube tray.  So Chicken Nuggets/BBQ sauce, Tater Tots/Ketchup, crackers/peanut butter, strawberries/yogurt, apples/Carmel and carrots/ranch dressing.  Instead of forks they got umbrella toothpicks.  If they wanted seconds on anything they used skewers to reach from the family style platter.

*Side note: the best chicken nuggets are Tyson's Honey Breast Tenders (they are in a red box).  Many adults who have tried them at my place have LOVED them*

Our first Dino Themed project was making fossils.  After a brief talk we were making impressions in air dry clay (from Crayola).  The kiddos used different parts from dinosaur figurines, shells, leaves, and other nature items.  When they loved how they turned out they will have to wait 3 days for them to turn into "rock".

Look out for Dino tracks on our
dinosaur hunt! Unfortunately it was raining all morning, but we were able to get a break in the weather to head outside.  I spray painted two-foot T-Rex footprints in a path throughout the yard.  The kiddos found and followed the path.  Along the way we found a deer antler rack (T-Rex's snack), this was a good opportunity to talk about dinosaurs' diet. 

The footprints led us to tall weeds.  A path was trampled in the weeds and it led to a 8 ft circle of trampled weeds (the dinosaur's nest).  There was a spot with leaves, twigs and craft moss and here we found EGGS!

We took the eggs back to the house, we had to skedaddle quickly in case mama-saurus was on her way home.  The kiddos had a lot of fun opening the eggs where we found baby dinosaurs.... oh so cute!

The eggs were easy to make, check out http://www.playcrateexplore.com for the recipe to make these fantastic dinosaur eggs.  I did a double batch to make 8 large eggs.

My favorite activity was when we did an archeology dig for dinosaur bones.  I made a skeleton from salt clay but you can purchase the bones at http://onecharmingparty.com, this site has amazing party ideas!  The plan was to use paint brushes to uncover the bones in a pool of sand, but the rain did not allow for this.  So I filled several baking dishes with bones and sand and each child had to uncover to contribute to our puzzle of bones.  When they were all found we put the dinosaur together. 

Ooooh, Aaaah!

 I had a bunch of silk leaves and grasses, tiny speckled craft eggs, rocks, craft moss, and a craft nest for the kiddos to make a diorama in the sand for the dinosaur figurines.  One of my friend's kiddos really enjoyed creating his own Dino Land.
Super day!