Poppins Book Nook ~ All About Dinosaurs!

Welcome to the magical world of Poppins Book Nook for the month of May! I am so excited to be participating in this series each month! Our family adores books and it's always fun to talk about your favorites!

The Poppins Book Nook is unique because we are not selecting a book by author/publisher, but rather we are selecting any storybook that fits into the topic. The Poppins Book Nook theme for the month of May is Dinosaurs and prehistoric times!

I have boys and they are VERY interested in Dinosaurs! So I wanted to share with you what our family's favorite dinosaur themed stories are--perhaps they are some of yours too!

Our most favorite book about dinosaurs is...

Oh how the boys adore this book when we read it aloud! It's marked as a Level 2 reader at our library--but really after just one time of me reading it aloud, Little Britches was confident enough to read it on his own...just asking for help on a couple dinosaur names. The pictures are fabulously hilarious. The dialogue is ideal for reading aloud...

I personally love the mom's comments and facial expressions in this book!

And we were able to dovetail right into a great discussions on what kind of dinosaurs we'd like to get for free---and what we could use them for.

During art class this week, Little Britches was given various snacks and some peanut butter and told to "build a dinosaur". My mother-in-law (the art teacher) said he had a blast with this activity! And then he enjoyed gobbling it up during lunch.

Our main "I can Read" books for this theme are the fabulous Danny and the Dinosaur books by classic children's author Syd Hoff.

Little Britches loves to read these books...

Another favorite is...

Little Britches loves the pictures in this book as well as the story itself--about Max Spaniel the "dinosaur hunter" who seeks to find dinosaur bones in his own backyard.

Our lesson plan this week included learning about how the names of the dinosaurs can tell us a about the dinosaur itself by studying the suffix and prefix. I am using a lesson plan from a free site called The Learning Page. The lesson plan is geared towards 1st-2nd graders and is perfect for Little Britches.

Once that was done, I had him create his own dinosaur! First I let him choose a base color (green) and we painted his hand and then he used his hand to create the body. He decided to use it to make spikes. Then using his choice of colors he painted the rest of his dinosaur. Once he was done, we used the suffix and prefix name list to name the dinosaur--Steggodactylsaurus!

I also used the cutout dinosaur images to create a Dinosaur Hunt of our own. I colored and cut out dinosaurs and then I hid them all over the house for Little Britches to find---kitchen, bathroom, closet, bedroom, etc.

This was quite the fun activity--he enjoyed running around trying to find them...especially when I hid some in the kitchen pantry. I gave him a clipboard with their names--some he recognized, some he didn't--and he would lay them out to count and see if he had found them all. Once he found them all, I read the meaning of each name and had him try to figure out which dinosaur was which. 

When he was done I had him tell me which one was his favorite (the Oviraptor) and had him color a page for it (also from learningpage.com)

We had a lot of fun with our dinosaur unit and it was fun to read our favorite books again!

Here are some of our favorite dinosaur theme books for you to get for your own family!

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Here is a list of all the other fabulous blogs participating with our Dinosaur theme! 

Make sure you visit them and check out what their favorites books are--and see what kind of activities they did!

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom - Royal Baloo - 3 Dinosaurs - Monsters Ed - Chestnut Grove Academy - Growing in God's Grace - Royal Little Lambs - Life with Moore Babies - Teach Beside Me - The Usual Mayhem - Mum Central - Fantastic Fun and Learning - Kathys Cluttered Mind - Play Create Explore - Toddler Approved - Growing Book by Book - Adventures in Mommydom - B-Inspired Mama - The Fairy and The Frog - Edventures with Kids - Learning & Growing the Piwi way - A Gluten Free Journey - Mom to Crazy Monkeys - No Doubt Learning - Preschool Powol Packets - To The Moon and Back - Our Craft ~N~ Things -Farm Fresh Adventures - Proverbial Homemaker

Have a blessed day!