Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Magic Tree House History Unit 1 - Dinosaurs

After reading Dinosaurs Before Dark (she sat through me reading it in one sitting), I printed out some dinosaur coloring pages from here, not so much for coloring, but so Bear could see the shapes of a selection of dinosaurs.

Bear was asked to pick the three dinosaurs she liked the most.  For these, we did a little bit more reading.  I then read her the pages at wikibooks.  (Here is an example for apatosaurus - the links for each dinosaur can be found at the alphabet coloring book link above.)

I also printed out this and cut it up to make a skinny strips of dinosaur facts.  We sorted them into carnivores and herbivores and we matched our plastic dinosaurs
to the cards after she excavated them from her dig.


I browsed kidsdinos and was going to share some of it with Bear, but never got around to it.

We also learned some songs at CanTeach which we have been singing at Calendar time at "school."

Our favorite dinosaur books have been the "How do Dinosaurs..." series by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague, 

and Gnash, Gnaw, Dinosaur! by Tony Mitton.
This is definitely Bear's favorite!

9 comments:

  1. There's an actual book called Dinosaur Train that she'd probably love, that and "When Dinosaurs Came With Everything."

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  2. Doesn't the Magic Treehouse books lend itself so well to study new places and animals? It's such a good jumping board. We've done lots of dinosaur work in the past so we didn't do an indepth study but if we did, it would be similar to yours! So much fun!

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  3. This is wonderful Julie! I will have to remember the dino matching activity and links in this post.

    I'd mentioned a while back to you that we LOVE Magic Tree House, that I enjoyed it with Hanna and recently introduced it to Joe, who loves it just as much. You inspired me a month back to do unit studies with the books. We are currently doing our first one, and it is more fun than I ever imagined:-). I cannot wait to share it in a week or so!

    Thank you!!

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  4. My daughter loves loves loves the dinosaurs series by Jane Yolen! Can't wait to share the treehouse series with my little girl when she is older.

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  5. This is a great dinosaur unit! Dinos are forever popular here, and ironically we also read Mitton book this week. Anna stated that the book is too scary and has to go back to the library even though her favorite dinosaur is still a T-Rex.

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  6. I just started reading the first Magic Treehouse book to my son. His attention span is not quite there yet, but we've made it through 4 chapters. I love all of your dinosaur activities! The "How Do Dinosaurs..." books are some of our favorites, too.

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  7. What a great dinosaur unit! My children always loved having fossil excavations. Using plastic dinosaurs is a great idea!
    I love your blog and gave you an award at http://LivingMontessoriNow.com/2010/08/20/awards-to-happily-pass-on/

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  8. What great resources and a fun lessons. My son is currently obsessed with all things dinosaurs I will definitely be printing out some coloring pages and doing some dino lessons :-)

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  9. Love the books, activities, and links! I just featured your dinosaur matching photo and your post at http://livingmontessorinow.com/2011/08/18/montessori-inspired-dinosaur-unit/

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