Carnivores, Herbivores and Omnivores

We had another fun filled day today with our dinosaur theme. First thing in the morning Noa, Clodia and Olivia all came to the table to decorate their dinosaur tracing enlargements they did using the overhead projector earlier in the week. They had lots of art materials on the table to choose from including tape, markers, colored pencils, tape and crayons. They each decided on a material and started to decorate their dinosaurs. All of the girls liked using the tape to decorate their dinosaur drawings as well as crayons. They also put the piece of pierced metal underneath their work and when they rubbed with crayons it left a nice spotted pattern on the paper. Once they had completed decorating it the teachers cut them out and put them on display in the classroom. Please take a look if you get a moment, they look great. Tokutaro came to the second table where he had a dinosaur drawing he also started earlier in the week and wanted to draw more on it. Ava soon joined him and added a nice rainbow to her purple dinosaur picture too. After clearing away the toys and eating snack we had a quick look at the new chess set again to see if we could remember the rules for using the ‘pawns’ (foot soldiers) and the ‘rooks’ (Castles). We put the chess mat on the carpet and set up the pieces. Beckett told us how the white pieces move first and that the pawns can only move forward 1 or 2 squares. We each then took a turn moving the pawns and soon there were very few pawns on the board as we learnt how we could ‘take’ pieces by moving one square diagonally. We then started to use the rooks and saw how they moved only in straight lines but could also go backwards too. It was a very close match and lots of fun. We will introduce the knights next time. The park was very warm and humid but lots of fun with the children making use of all the equipment and we all came back hot and sweaty. Luckily we took our water bottles with us to stay cool. On the way back from the park we sang a few of our favorite songs including ‘Old McDonald had some vowels’, ‘Haru Ga Kita’ and ‘1, 2 Buckle my Shoe’. We also played a few simple addition games using our fingers too. In circle time we did some dinosaur sorting games with 3 categories to divide the dinosaurs into: 1. Dinosaurs with 2 legs that live on the land. 2. Dinosaurs with 4 legs that live on the land. 3. Dinosaurs with 2 legs that can fly & live mostly in the sky. We then got a few dinosaurs each and sorted them onto the correct piece of paper. We then turned the paper over and saw there were some pictures of meat, leaves, fruit, vegetables, bugs and fish on the backs. We could then choose which kind of food we thought the dinosaurs would have eaten. We noticed how some of the dinosaurs had sharp teeth and so we thought they would eat meat, while those with flat teeth probably ate leaves, fruit and vegetables. We sorted as few of them and learnt some new words for meat eaters, plant eaters etc. ‘Carnivores’, ‘Herbivores’ and ‘Omnivores’. We then thought of a few modern creatures like cows, lions, cats and even people and decided if they were ‘Carnivores’, ‘Herbivores’ or ‘Omnivores’. Have a great afternoon, All our Love, Darren & Ayaka