Main Activity 1 - Dinosaurs:
This weeks first activity was learning about dinosaurs (a firm favourite of many of the children!). We talked about what dinosaurs were, how long ago they roamed the earth, what size they were, what they ate and what their habitat was like among other things. We looked and read about dinosaurs in a big book and then got stuck into our various dinosaur related activities:-
Dinosaur fossils. After talking about what fossils were and who digs them up and studies them (Paleontologists) we made our own playdough, rolled it out using a small rolling pin and then using miniature dinosaur skeletons, made imprints in the dough to replicate fossils
Pretending to be Paleontologists. We hid some mini-dinosaurs in sand on a tuff tray, gave the children paintbrushes and asked them to try and find the dinosaurs. When they found them they had to carefully try to remove all the sand using the paintbrushes
Dinosaur eggs. Using our home made playdough again but this time mixing it with food colouring, we put mini dinosaurs in the dough and made it into an egg shape. We then pretended the dinosaurs had to hatch out of them
Making a prehistoric volcano eruption! For our pièce de résistance, we recreated a prehistoric landscape with an erupting volcano at the centre
Main Activity 2 - Conkers:
The second activity involved putting our creative hats on to think of different ways that we could use the many conkers that had dropped from our horse chestnut trees:-
Conker people. We used a hammer and long nails to connect some conkers together to make conker people
Conker recipes for our tea party. We used the mud kitchen along with some pots and pans to create different conker based recipes including conker soup, conker pasta and conker cakes. The children then decided to lay them out on a tarp to create a conker themed tea party
Conker racing. We tried rolling conkers down various tubes and pipes. We connected some of the pipes together and tried using different size pipes to see which were fastest and to listen to the different sounds they made
Conker paintings. We painted some conkers and then stuck them to paper to create various pictures. Some of the children decided to make a picture of the planets in our solar system using conkers to represent the planets
Conker necklaces. We used a hand drill to drill through the centre of several conkers, threaded some string through them and then tied the ends of the string together to make a necklace
Home activity:
Make your own paper mache erupting volcano. This is a really fun activity to do with your child and produces brilliant results! Click the link below from the Red Ted Art website which shows you how to make everything and includes a video showing the end results. Don't forget to upload your videos to Tapestry when you've finished.
Comments