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dinosaurs

dinosaur-fun

Yesterday, one of our kindergarten students brought in a dinosaur made of scrap metal.  He had received it as a gift over the weekend, and was so excited to show all of his friends at school.  He brought it into the classroom in the morning and the children instantly began talking about dinosaurs.  My teaching partner and I had them tidy up and meet us on the carpet.  We allowed the student to tell us all about the dinosaur and then had a sharing time for all of the children to tell us what they wished to about dinosaurs.  It amazed us how much they knew!  We knew it was a wonderful opportunity to begin some inquiry based learning! We could sat on the carpet listening to the students for hours, but instead, we decided to quickly set up a few activities for them to actively share their knowledge instead.  As the students were chatting on the carpet, and passing around the metal dinosaur, I set up the writing centre with pencil crayons, markers, pencils and writing paper so they could create stories with their knowledge.  I also got out a large piece of mural paper so we could paint a scene where dinosaurs may have lived.  In our book centre, I quickly gathered all of the dinosaur stories we had and put them in the centre of that carpet for the children to look at.

Later during the day, after nutrition break was finished, I set up some creative art centres for the students.  I had printed pictures of dinosaurs for the children to do marble painting, set out toilet paper rolls for them to make 3D dinosaurs and put out construction paper/glue/scissors/markers for them to create their own dinosaurs.  A small group of children also wanted to help finish the mural we had begun in the morning. 

By the end of the day, we had created a dinosaur mural displaying our art, read 2 non-ficiton books about dinosaurs, hung several stories the children had created throughout the classroom and had time to share all of their knowledge that they already had about dinosaurs.  The children were engaged in all of the centres throughout the day and are excited to continue to learn about dinosaurs.