Another Goodbye to the Dinosaurs…and January Unit Plans!

It was our last week with the dinosaurs, so I made sure to teach them about one last dinosaur that they all wanted to know more about…the tyrannosaurus rex. After the whole terrifying allosaurus ordeal, I was shocked that so many of them wanted to study this horrific creature. They seemed to learn quite a bit, and they really enjoyed walking around like t-rexes with their puny dinosaur arms.

Since I’m a super nice and cool teacher, I bought them a little surprise on Tuesday morning.

The instructions said that the dinosaur should hatch in 12-24 hours, so I thought, “Great! They’ll have a few days to play with it!”

It did not take 12-24 hours. In fact, I had to {secretly} induce it on Friday morning before the kids came in. They were so excited that it had finally hatched! As they all came hurdling towards me to let me know, I put on an Oscar worthy performance of pretending to be just as shocked as they were.

I love ending things on a good note {can ya tell?} so I let the kids watch two Magic School Bus episodes that connected to both our dinosaur and energy units. Remember how much I love Bill Nye? I share the same feelings for The Magic School Bus. Grade One just can’t be taught properly without it.

"Busasaurus" 

"Gets Energized"

Oh wait...that's not how I ended the week. We actually ended off Friday by making dinosaur fossils! Here's what you do:

1. Use Crayola Model Magic-it's not messy and it won't cause health problems (apparently other clays can). Squish it into the bottom of a Tupperware container lined with foil.
2. Use a strong cast plaster and mix it with water until it resembles the consistency of pancake batter
3. I bought dinosaur skeleton toys off Amazon and used them to squish into the clay

4. Pour the plaster into the mould and let it sit. We are letting ours sit over the weekend.

5. Cross your fingers and hope they turn out as well as the model (even though mine broke on the way to school).

One last thing: If you want to use some of these ideas, but need some help to actually put it into a unit plan, I have attached the links to download mine. Change it up as you need to. 

January Literacy Unit Plan. Click HERE to download.

January Math Unit Plan. Click HERE to download.

January Science Unit Plan. Click HERE to download.

The kids are bummed that the dinosaurs are gone from the classroom, but I’m hoping they’ll be just as excited as I am for our new unit {starting tomorrow} on the Olympics!

Time to go and get everything ready for tomorrow/all next week.

Happy Sunday!