Beware of Dinos...(and Mrs. Cooley Finds her Inner Mrs. Frizzle)

I want to be Mrs. Frizzle. (If you have no idea who I'm talking about, grab some Magic School Bus books--they're the best!) When I say I want to be Mrs. Frizzle, I'm talking about wanting to create an environment in which learning is visible everywhere, and the theme is integrated into all aspects of the curriculum! In Mrs. Frizzle's room, her class is magically taken on learning adventures in the Magic School Bus. Although I don't have a magic bus, I want the learning that is taking place to be so much fun that it feels as if a Magic School Bus has whizzed into the room and transported everyone into another time and place!!! {I also want Mrs. Frizzle's themed outfits and earrings.} Anyway, this week, I have channeled my inner Mrs. Frizzle, and have tried to make the classroom into a room that revolves all around dinosaurs! The picture above, and the one below, are two of our classroom dinosaurs! It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but the dinosaurs are pretty big--the T-Rex almost touches the ceiling, and the Brontosaurus is about as tall as the white board! I used the two dinos in my lesson about carnivores and herbivores, and I had the kids draw and label food items for each of the dinosaurs. My personal favorites were the "grassy poptart" made especially for our herbivore dino, and the meatball made for our carnivore dino!


We made fossils using play-doh and shells! This is the fossil display station.

This is Pete the Paleontologist. When I introduced Pete to the class, he didn't have any tools at all. We studied pictures of Paleontologists, looked at real photos and slides from the Sue T-Rex Exhibit in Chicago, and then created tools for Pete. We labeled them together on the poster!