Dinosaurs are a big topic of interest in my house and we scoured the library for a fun book to read this month for our Poppins Book Nook Club. Surprising to me, our learning curved away from science side of dinosaurs and more onto learning about language.
We came home with several books, but it’s Dinos in the Snow that hooked my daughter’s creative-side as we read it.
Today’s activity that I’m sharing with you was simply a random activity that came up after our reading of Dinos in the Snow. I didn’t really plan for it, but it was a fun activity for the three of us girls to work on together.
When my 6 year old originally noticed many of the words in the book starting with the same letters, I introduced the term “alliteration” because I feel it’s never too early to be introduced to big vocabulary. Sure enough, there were several sentences containing alliteration throughout the story. After reading the book, we revisited the alliteration areas that described the names of dinosaurs doing something. 
She wanted to make her own book using family members doing things that started with the first letters of their names. We brainstormed together, although after she got the hang of it, I was only supplying the names, while she was coming up with the rest. I wrote what she dictated and both of my daughters worked on illustrations. We had a pretty full collection of pages.
When we were done with more than twice as many pages than what’s pictured, I suggested putting the pages in alphabetical order, to give her practice. She thought that was a great idea (score!), so she handed me the pages in order of first names.
She designed a cover for the book, we stapled everything together, and that was that! We had a brand new book to share with Daddy when he returned home from work. And, my kids must have read it at least a half dozen times before he arrived!
If you plan to try something like this, check out a copy of the book Animalia, which is an ABC book full of alliteration. It provides a great link to this “lesson.” Surprisingly we hadn’t read the book before, so it was nice to be able to pull out a new book that supported her spontaneous book-making activity.
(My favorite page is “Daddy dances on the damper.” The damper has been a big topic of conversation in our house for the past week for some reason!)
Check out some of the other great dinosaur ideas from the blogs below! Then, consider sharing some of your own Dinosaur/Prehistoric books and activities by adding your blog post into the linky below which will be opened for the next two weeks. For June, get ready for a theme of Travel and Transportation!
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Did you know that reindeer have a large reign? The new vocabulary helped us understand that reindeer are amazing travellers! Among many resources, the pictures in our library book (left) were amazing and helped us see reindeer as the true creatures they were – not just as a connection to Santa. It was so much fun for the girls to see on a map that the Caribou live right above the United State in Canada! One of the activities we did was a picture-story. I had an old calendar that had a picture of a Caribou and my kindergartener dictated a story to me. The funny thing was that it included many characters from our house meeting up with the Caribou!
Snowy Owls don’t make nests in trees or cliffs – they make a hollow area in the ground to lay their eggs and nest. We thought this was fascinating, given than the Arctic Foxes and other land animals were predators. But, maybe it helps that the Arctic Owl is one of the biggest owls in the world! Using the foldable provided by 
We played this game at the kindergarten level by laying out the cards picture-side-up. I would show a picture and my girls would each look for that card. As they were searching, I would read the facts about that animal or painting. We then split the deck in half and were able to play 2 different games of memory. It was great bringing a form of professional art into the lessons!
The Arctic Fox is similar to the Arctic Hare in that its fur changes color from summer to winter to blend in with the arctic conditions. One of the most interesting fact we learned about the Arctic Fox was its relationship with the Polar Bear. Arctic Foxes stay their distance from Polar Bears, but once a Polar Bear is done with its meal, the Arctic Fox is quick to finish up the leftovers. Another great lesson we learned was the difference between foxes and wolves. My girls could pick up on the differences in pictures almost immediately, whereas I had a little more trouble!!
As mentioned 
