Summer Reading: Dinosaur Week

As I plan story times throughout the year, I love coming upon sites where other librarians or teachers have shared their entire lesson plans. Why reinvent the wheel, right? This summer, I am going to try to share our thematic activities, in brief, in hopes that it will save someone else a few hours of planning. Pin or steal away!

Story Times

To start our story times off in a very cool way, I held up what looked like a strange rock, and asked the kids what they thought it was, then passed it around. A few months ago, a gentleman came in and asked if I could use a piece of a real, fossilized dinosaur leg. Um...yes!!! How many times do you get to start your day by holding part of a real dinosaur?! That definitely grabbed everyone's attention as we started in on the stories.

Monday: Preschool

     What we read:
                     

            

     What we made:

from 1-2-3 learn.

 

Table set-up:

 

Since this is preschool, I had all the pieces cut out and placed on the plates. There were extras out in case anyone wanted to trade colors. I also used eyeball stickers instead off googly eyes for this one, simply because we had some, and they are fun!

Glue doesn't always stick to plates well, so I also had tape and staplers available.



Tuesday: Kinder/1st Grade

     What we read:
        
     What we made:

 

Table set-up:

 

There were a variety of dinosaur outlines available, found on various coloring page sites. If this were a normal school-year story time, I would have parents or kids write all of the words, but I knew I might get some daycares - one adult trying to write for ten clamoring kids can get a bit overwhelmed, so I gave them the sentence starter to use if they wanted to.

Wednesday: 2nd Grade and Up

     What we read:
         
    
What we made:

 

Table set-up:

 

Again, I had a variety of shapes from different coloring page sites. Those were in a separate area so the kids could pick which one they wanted - older kids tend to be pickier! The ways their dinosaurs defended theselves were especially...creative. My favorite would have to be the one that farted lava.

Tween Activities

The Tweens (yes, we hate that term, too) were T-Rexes for the evening. They were given large shirts and had to pull their arms in so just their hand poked out, and go through a variety of activities. There was a wet rock throwing game:

 

A craft:

 

And a basketball game:

 

which turned into a soccer game:

 

Even snacks had to be eaten T-Rex style:

 

 

 Everyone seemed to have a good time, and no major injuries were reported!
 

For our movie day Thursday, we watched a few Land Before Time movies. Ducky is just cute, I don't care how old you are:)

Next week: Plants!