These Last Few Were Have Been DINO-MITE!

Hello Bloggers!

What a crazy few weeks it has been for me!  But now the madness has slowed down for a wee bit, I have found sometime to blog about the adventures!

Two weeks ago our school had our annual "Kindergarten Round Up."  When I first heard about it, I honestly thought it was a rodeo for the current kindergartners.  (Don't ask.)  Well that's not exactly what it was.  It's a day where the pre-k students that are currently attending our school AND are coming to kindergarten next year, come and spend a day "as a kindergartener."  I was told that this was going to be the best day in kindergarten and be prepared for it to be a fun, fast and crazy day.

And I was lucky enough to get to run with it.  [Thanks Angie!]

The theme of the week was dinosaurs.  This is my principals' favorite thing in the world, so I had no pressure on making my room look awesome. 

So I looked at my Cricut and said..."you need a Dino cartridge."

And I die-cutted and die-cutted and die-cutted some more...

This is what I came up with...

Dino 1-1 correspondence.  A number on a dinosaur...? Put that many "scales" back on them!

Likewise, I had another set of these that had higher numbers.  The kids had to count the number of dino's and put the clip on the corresponding number.   I was very impressed with how much the kids could count!  I'm glad to know they have a great foundation in math!

These two can be found at teacherspayteachers.com.  I sadly don't have the exact name of the center, but I know it is a quick search on their site.  Please don't copy from me...go get the original from them!  It's totally worth the ten seconds it takes to find, download and print! 

Counting to 100 Dino Chart!  The pre-K kids didn't get to play with this chart, but the kindergartners sure had a great time with them!  I pulled out a few of the numbers and the kids had to put them back in the correct spot.  This was great because the kids were learning numbers and patterns!

For one of the centers, the kids got to make their own dino-frames! They are still waiting for their pictures though... [I keep forgetting to pick them up at Walgreens!]  We ran out of stickers, so I had to get new ones out.  One of our kids decided to dump all of the stickers out onto the table...which caused a huge mess! This center was extremely crazy.  Next year, I decided that if I get to do Round-Up Day again, I will limit how many stickers the kids can use.  Then have extra coloring sheets for the kids to color with once they are done with their frame.   No more dumping things!

The kids practiced counting to 10 with dino feet.  The kindergartners had numbers up to 20.  On the other side, there were blue numbers that practiced counting by 10's.  There were also pink words that had the number words written out...another great practice at reading and figuring those tricky words out!

 I used the...you guessed it...Cricut to make these feet!!  I purposely put them in a colored pattern too, to help kids recognize patterns!  Because they are smaller, they took a lot of time to make.  I think I watched about three Dr. Phil shows while making these!  (Remember I had different numbers and words on the back.  The ones featured here are only half of the created feet.  ...cutting those letters out took the most time!)

And my favorite creation....

The kids made dino hats! 

I was pretty impressed with this one.   This center was to assess how well kids could pattern, count and cut.  First I die-cutted enough dinosaur's to make my head spin!

Then I asked them how old they were.  If they were five, they got five dino's, if they were four, they got four dino's.  Then they had to make a pattern with them.  Some of the kids understood the concept of a pattern, while others did not.   

After they glued on their dino's, I drew a line and they had to cut on that line.

Afterwards, I stapled the hat together and viola! We have a dino hat!  I had the kids pose in front of the mini dinosaur display that's featured underneath.

Sadly, the only photos that I have with the finished product are on students' heads.  Since I don't want to share the identities of my kids...you will have to just use your imagination!  I'll post a new one up next time promise!

And last but not least...the biggest dino of them all!!!

That's all for now!

<3
Em