~a month of dinosaurs!~ drawing dinosaurs, reading new books about dinosaurs, chatting about dinosaurs, being dinosaurs…~
~the most frequently requested activity this month was, “let’s do some dinosaur stickers!” he has completely filled in the 40 or so pages of the dinosaur encyclopedia, and only a few stickers remain. this sticker book is pretty cool- it has an entry for many different dinosaurs, and they are organized into groupings that make fairly good sense (“flying reptiles”, “plated dinosaurs”, “fast runners”). then, there are bonus pages depicting different dinosaur habitats, and you get to use all the extra stickers to populate the scenes. there is a checklist with each habitat scene, and when we had completed those, there were still dinosaurs left on the sticker pages, so we researched each one (sometimes the sticker book itself gave us a clue about whether an individual lived in woodlands or desert, but other times we used quinn’s new dinosaur reference books (whichever ones were cheap on amazon- one called dinosaur-us, and one by national geographic) to find out. i think the neatest thing is that quinn is also realizing that not only did the dinosaurs not all co-exist in one type of environment, they also did not all overlap in time. he’s becoming conversant about which dinosaurs hung out together in Cretaceous period lakes in China, for example. he is really grasping some cool concepts as he immerses himself in this one topic. i like that he will be able to point out the anachronisms in all the dinosaur movies hollywood has to offer, you know, like cretaceous park, (or was it jurassic?)
~and when i say “immerse”…. well, like any unschooling mama does, i tend to “strew” things about in his vicinity, the amazon books being great examples. (the pop-up book quinn is growling at above was another great gamble- it had one page that needed a piece of scotch tape, otherwise it was mint! and contained some good info, to boot!) we also made some dinosaur crayons this month (we save our old broken crayons, and have in the past made round muffin-tin crayons, but this time we got a super duper candy mold to make them in dinosaur shapes.) don’t hold your breath for a tutorial around here, by the way. but there are lots of them out there for this particular project!
~of course you’ve already heard me blogging non-stop about the garden adventures….. he’s my sidekick.~
~looking back, i realize we spent a good deal of time outside, in spite of it having been a rainy month. we seem to have lucked out that it happened to be sunny on the days i happened not to be working.~
~quinn helped me put together a birthday gift for rich, a scrapbook of the play he recently performed in. he helped me a lot with cutting the edges of the paper with wavy scissors, and glue-sticking the photos onto the pages.~ he has taken a little pancake under his wing.~ also (not pictured) spent some quality time with friends, and got to hold a friend’s two week old son. he did some serious playing. or we could call it “socialization,” if you want.~ we dyed easter eggs and shared lots of family meals; quinn is gradually learning table manners… at his own pace.~ and more of the usual: living, cooking, reading, playing, creating, building, moving, singing, storytelling.
~laughing, loving, being. what else is there to learn?
MB–You comment prompted me to leave one for you. You little guy is adorable AND so glad things are working out for you and the man! 🙂
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So funny that I woke up to this post- I spent the better part of yesterday with an (almost) 5yr old playing 'paleontologist' in the sandbox 🙂 the rules were very elaborate and I had some not so 5yr old terms thrown at me- not even sure they were 33yr old terms! We are also snake enthusiasts and curled up before bed to watch a documentary on 'TitanoBoa'. I wish Quinn and Zack could have a playdate! I would video the whole thing!
that would be awesome! i've been thinking of building quinn a sandbox…
Oh this post makes me happy. So much love and trust.
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I was big into dinosaurs when I was his age. I remember one Dinosaur book at the library in particular that I would check out regularly. Children are so much smarter than a lot of people give them credit for, they can grasp some pretty complex concepts. Melting down the crayon ends and making new molded shapes is brilliant! I've said something along these lines more than once before but if only there were more mamas like you! You never cease to amaze me with your awesome mother skills and abilities at bringing up that spitfire Quinn of yours 😀
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