Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Here Comes Science Sampler: Dinosaurs!

I am a payyyyyy-leon-taaaaah-lo-giiiiist!
It's who I am, it's who I am, it's who I aaaaaaam.
(Watch the video -- it's a jazzy song you just have to sing all day.  At least that's what we do.  It's Linus's favorite.  It's good, I promise.  Even if you don't love dinosaurs.)

We're back!!  The Here Comes Science Sampler is BACK!  Resurrecting a lot of things lately (no seasonal pun intended)!

We've read a lot of dinosaur books.  This is the best glossary we've unearthed -- hands down.  (Bonus: minimal number of pictures of bloody, fleshy predator-prey situations.  It is what it is, of course, but so many dinosaur fans are about 3 years old -- it's nice to have books that are enjoyable and less likely to cause this question to be asked at bedtime, "Mama, do predators come to our house?"  No, honey, they don't  <3 )

I could go on (and on and on and on) with good titles.  But, you can discover your favorites at the library.  The section is usually well marked.  Or, the carpet is worn in that patch, about the size of three-year-old feet.

If you like dinosaurs, why not:

put together little dinos? (Thank you, Michael's dollar section.)

 Or BIG dinos?

Or excavate dinos? (We ARE paleontologists.)

















There's also Diggin' Dinos Monopoly Jr. and breadstick "bones."
We're starting some dioramas next.  Sela renamed them "dinoramas."  That cracked us up.

I'm actually really fascinated at this point, too.  How to hold the dinosaur phenomenon in one's head??  The geography of it, the climates, the concept of time, extinction.  The factoids.  For instance, the skull of the T. rex weighed... 750 pounds.  The brain of a stegasaurus... size of a walnut.  A creature that weighed 100 tons.  100. Tons.

It's good stuff!

8 comments:

  1. This is great. I always expected we would do dinosaurs, but neither of my kids was interested. You might like the book "How to Make a Dinosaur Out of Chicken Bones" (or something like that). It looked like fun to me, but my vegetarian child was horrified. :\

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    1. I wonder how that would go at my house! It could go either way... I'm game to find out. Although, maybe I'm the one who can't hack it, now that I think about it : D

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  2. i just this evening met a phd student in ucd's dept of anthropology - he's the contact for outreach programs & said he'd be happy to coordinate a program. maybe you could meet real-life dinosaur-fossil-digger-uppers!

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  3. i totally love that song.
    go, tmbg!!
    ~di

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    1. It's a great one! We can't even say "pachycephalosaurus" without adding a question mark to the end, per the song!

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  4. love how many creative ways you find to bring dinosaurs into your daily lives

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