Since our older kids had been begging for a dinosaur unit study, I made it happen in February 2022. This one was definitely an immersive experience we won’t forget soon!
We always start every unit with a display that gets the kids excited about the subject we will be learning. I set it up after bedtime so they’re surprised the next morning when they come down for breakfast. Two of the kids were extremely freaked out by this ridiculous dinosaur and screamed until I took him apart, so we’ll give this display a 33% approval rating.
We don’t always go this “all out” for our units, but this time I also got them each a set of pajamas, a new item of dinosaur themed clothing, and some dinosaur themed food in addition to the normal purchases I make like small toys, books, and sticker books.
We started the first morning with a dinosaur dig. I buried small plastic dinosaur skeletons in kinetic sand and provided small digging tools and paint brushes for them to find the skeletons!
We tried this timeline activity to help the abstract idea of prehistoric time periods come to life. I placed a dinosaur in the bottom of a wire wastebasket and we placed “sediment” (crumpled construction paper) on top of the dinosaur. Then, we buried other dinosaurs under different colors, showing how the older dinosaurs are buried at the bottom of the sample. This beautiful timeline chart is from Fiddlestics Education on Etsy.
For many of our unit studies, I find a sticker book to use as one of the backbones of our lessons. We will place the stickers on the pages that go along with our daily topics. This specific book was a really good one. The kids enjoyed that it had extra little activities for them to do after placing the stickers.
These two books were the spine for our unit. We read about several different dinosaurs each day from the two books. We also watched shows like Dino Dana and Dan, Gigantosaurus, Dinosaur Train, and Dino Ranch. Each of these is entertaining while offering small tidbits of facts that added to our lessons.
Our big field trip for this unit was visiting the fossil section of the Charleston Museum. The kids really enjoyed getting to see the real samples of fossils we had been reading about. For a rare treat, dad was able to join us on this field trip!
We learned about mold and cast fossils and made some of our own!
Finally, for our culminating activity, we found real fossils in this National Geographic dig kit. This paid off in more ways that one. In addition to digging and learning about each fossil we found, the kids spent countless hours playing “archaeologists” in our backyard which was in the middle of a major landscaping project.
They displayed all their “fossils” in a “museum” and had the best time. This, to me, is one of the best things about homeschooling with a unit study approach. The kids continue their learning straight into playtime almost every day!
Download my free one-page resource filled with ideas for your own dinosaur unit study here!
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