It started like any other Monday—back to routines, back to some seatwork (math, writing, reading) for homeschool, back to household chores. But as the day wore on, a theme developed. Quietly at first, but by this evening my eldest was saying to me, “Why have I had so much dinosaur excitement today?”
After completing their seatwork and a few chores this morning, the boys elected to watch The Magic School Bus—the dinosaur episode “The Busasaurus”. I did a few things, and went upstairs to prepare lunch, checking the mail as I did so. Daegan’s long-awaited Zoobooks magazine—the dinosaur issue as advertized in last months magazine—had arrived. After lunch, he went to his room with the magazine and was not heard from for a good hour. Well, apart from the odd squeals of delight: “Triceratops! My favourite!” Or disagreement: “That’s not right! Not all therapods had sharp teeth—most scientists now think gallimimus didn’t have teeth at all!” Seeing him challenge what he is reading in this way warms the cockles of my philosophically-trained heart. :-)
Later in the afternoon Daegs and I did some art together—we worked on one of the dinosaur mosaics he got in a Sticky Mosaics (Orb Factory) kit for Christmas. Whilst talking dinos the whole time, of course. Yesterday he and I watched a Nova special I had recorded about Microraptor, called The Four-Winged Dinosaur (microraptor, unlike all modern birds, had feathers on its legs/feet, as well as its arms/hands). We discussed bird-like dinos, whether first flight was ground-up or treetop-down, the reasons why dinos evolved feathers, how many other species of dino may have had feathers (current scientific thought is that T Rex likely had feathers, at least while young and small).
So what do I find the boy doing after baths and teeth-brushing tonight? He’s created his own dinosaur craft—cutting Q-Tips to length to match the bones in his hand-drawn Struthiomimus. And I still need to post his rendition of the Dinosaur Song that we recorded last night!
So there you have it: Instant unit study. Theme: dinosaurs. I wonder if Phil Currie got his start this way?
