Dinosaur Days

Dinosaur Days
Originally uploaded by Justin and Kelly Webb

We have had a great week...alot less crazy than our usual summer week. In fact, there were two days when we only had swimming lessons and that was it! What to do on these hot summer days....

Well, last week when the boys were home (in between craziness) I noticed that they were easily bored and would fight alot. I asked them if they needed school to start and they both said "yes". I told them that I could be their teacher and give them class work and they both excitedly shouted "YES!!". So last week I simply gave preschool workbooks to Sam and kindergarten/1st grade books to Caleb and that kept them both happy. This week, I knew we would need more, so we had Dinosaur Week. The boys LOVED it. In fact, on Tuesday when Dinosaur week kicked off (Monday was packed), Caleb told me at the end of the day that it was one of his favorite days ever. So cute. So what kept them entertained/happy/getting along so well during "class"?
- Dinosaur Find (hiding plastic dinos)
- Identifying their plastic dinos...Caleb used the Dinosaur Train website to help w/ identification. He made a list of all that we had. Naturally, he knew most of them and didn't need to look them up (he even knew if they were carnivores/herbivores...good grief), but he still double checked and had fun looking up the ones he didn't know. He felt good about this.
- Measuring Dinos and talking about tallest/shortest/etc. Sam was the official measurer....surprise surprise.
- Making dino footprints using play doh (and looking at differences and measuring them). Sam was entertained w/ this forEVER.
- Reading lots of dinosaur books (we had ALOT, yet I still bought a cool Dr. Seuss one last wk...couldn't resist).
- Found a Dinosaur Workbook in the $1 bin at Target...Caleb worked on that while Sam worked on writing his letters (he loves doing this now - yeah!!)
- Being dinosaurs outside...(basically playing outside, but we tried to make it more interesting by walking like them, making sounds like them and playing where we thought dinos would play).
- Making dinosaur eggs...finding good egg-shaped rocks and painting them to look like dino eggs
- Doing huge floor dinosaur jig-zaw puzzle (had this in the basement and had not done this one since we moved!) We even had a big wooden one for Izzy!!
- The kids had fun just playing w/ the plastic dinosaurs together...I seriously don't think they have ever just sat and played with them!! Izzy liked playing w/ them too.

Overall it was a huge sucess. Next week Caleb has a camp in the mornings, but I think we'll have "class" in the afternoons. I just have to come up w/ another good topic that keeps them both entertained and happy!

The boys are not the only ones learning this summer...Izzy is such a little sponge. She is learning words SO fast these days and is getting to be such a good talker. You can see how closely she pays attention to her brothers and she tries so hard to repeat/do what they do. She has the dinosaur roar down to a perfection. I think it might be better than Sam's ...it has almost become her new voice (she talks using this dino "voice") and she thinks it's hilarious....and so do my boys. Okay, so I think it's funny too, but only b/c it's crazy that such a deep, loud, raspy, scary voice/ noise could come out of such a tiny adorable little girl. And she's soooo proud of it....