Dino-Mite!!

   I  LOVE HOMESCHOOLING!!!  For school we are working on a dinosaur unit.Unit study is what works for Bella and it's the easiest for me to teach. I love writing her lessons every week and watching her learn. It's fun to take the stuff she is into at the moment (dinosaurs) and center her learning around it. We started this unit about 2 weeks ago. We have been talking about habitats and classifying animals by what they eat. we also have been doing dino math!

 Today was our project day for our unit. I try to have one big project for every unit we do. Today, we made a plaster model of a T-Rex tooth and then excavated it just like a real archeloigist!

I bought a kit at the Dino Musuem at Thanksgiving Point in Utah about 6 years ago when I was a teacher for my students. I never got around to using it but kept it. I found it about a year ago in a box and stuck it with all the other school stuff. I am so glad I did because it fit perfectly with what we are learning about.

Here is the Kit!

I also picked up this fossil of a mollusk. Isabella really loved having her own fossil!

Here is our little dino lover! ready to get started

The kit had a mold, instructions, and casting plaster

After mixing the plaster we poured it into the mold

After about 20 minutes it was done and we were able break off the excess.

Isabella was so excited. Also she was amazed how much bigger the T-Rex tooth was to her own.

Our beautiful tooth!

Isabella colored the tooth purple.

Ater it was colored we buried it it "dirt" (flour).

Then we talked about how scientists found dinosaur bones in the ground and about what tools they used. For Isabella, we used a large brush, a small brush and a toothpick.

Isabella started out with the large brush to find the tooth

once she found it she swithced to the small brush to clear the "dirt" from the sides of the tooth.

Then she used the toothpick to clean out the small corners.

YAY!! Isabella excavated her first 'fossil'! It was such a fun project for us to do.