Preschoolers Vs The Volcano....

Ok. So the title was a spoof of the early 90's movie Joe Vs the Volcano with Tom Hanks. I've done volcanoes with past preschool classes and I've always had the preschoolers make their own and then we take them out and disintergrate them. It can get pretty messy and then there's the trash to deal with....so I had this novel idea of having the kids share in making one big volcano this year. It was a great idea until one of my girlie's from last year expressed her displeausure in not having her very own...(Disclaimor for next year: I like the one volcano method and we shouldn't have any problems or false memories in next year's group since there was only one this year ;) But anywhoo--the team effort to deck out the mountain worked like a charm. Parsley became our trees, a few rocks, twigs, weeds, and a few plastic dinosaurs and wala....a Volcano.

We found our Eggs.....April 15, 2010

It was an amazing bright and sunny day. We couldn't have asked for a better day to search for the treasured eggs. We needed the dinosaurs inside the egg to go onto our next project--creating a fossil of our own. We pressed the dinosaur into a round of sand dough and let it dry to create a replica of a real dinosaur. Such fun things to do....

Going on a Egg Hunt....Dinosaur Eggs, that is-- April 15, 2010

We became Paleontologists for the day. Our assignment was to find the baby dinosaur eggs. We had our official name tags and tools (something like a paint brush). Miss Jolinda said there had been a few found in the empty lot across the street. Oh the excitement...I quickly explained that dinosaur eggs look a little like giraffe eggs (hahaha--teachers can get away with that kind of stuff because the students are so trusting and don't know any better ;)

So off we went looking for the fabulous dinosaur eggs. (Thanks to Miss Mary, Samuel's mom, who hid them for us). Everyone found their eggs and their unique dinosaur inside. The weather was perfect and ultra sunny. The funniest thing happened though. We had learned about fossils and how they were imprints in the rocks. There is this huge cement waste pile of sidewalk/driveway, etc. One of the pieces laying on top had a boot footprint in it. The kids were so observant and got really excited because they were convinced that they had found a fossil--yeah, really. One of a work boot of some unknown construction worker. The attention for detail in these little ones is AMAZ-ing.