Learning by Leaps and Baby-Steps: "D" week aka the week of Dinosaurs, Dogs and Ducks.

"D" week we read LOTS of stories dealing mostly with dinosaurs, dogs and ducks.

This week we had a trip to the zoo as well as the Renaissance Faire. For activities we did a Dino egg hunt and crafts. But more on that at the end :) First our book reviews, as always scored on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being books Fiona and I both loved. This week I'll even put the reviews in order of favorite book(s) on top descending down to books I want to remember so I don't make the mistake of checking them out again. I've also included links for books and video's and anything else i can think of :)

Puff the Magic Dragon - 10 - Fiona loves the copy of this book (and the included music cd) that we borrowed. The CD has Puff and Froggy went a' Courting and instrumentals of both songs. I like this version of the story because at the end you see an adult Jackie standing off to the side as his daughter befriends Puff. The very first time we read it Fiona exclaimed, "That's me!" and pointed at the little girl in the picture :D

ABC T-Rex - 9 - Cute rhyming book that Fiona really likes :) The book has a sentence for each letter, and every instance the letter shows up in the sentence it has been highlighted, which I really like. Far to often it seems only the first letter is of any importance. Also on each page the picture includes many items that do begin with the letter of the page.

Tinkerbell's Tea Party - 8 - Fiction - a lovely bit of fluff. Fiona loved it.

Dragolin - 8 - a story about a tiny dragon who can't make fire like the others is very sad and not accepted by them. He meets an armadillo who tells him that he needs to believe in himself and practice very hard and he will eventually breath fire, and of course Dragolin does learn to breath fire.

Ten Terrible Dinosaurs - Rhyming count down book with a dino theme. - 8 - I was writing down this review and had giving it a 6, when Fiona sat down and read it to herself. She was actually remembering a good deal of it :)

My Blue Boat - 7 - Fiction - a child plays with their toy boat in the bath while pretending to sail all over the world. Cute story.

Dog number 1- Dog number 10 = 7 - Counting book that actually counts up! Its amazing how hard it is to find a children's book/song that counts up! It was kinda strange, and the art work wasn't that good, but I liked that they touch on adding and skip counting by 2s.

Biscuit wants to Play - 7 - Fiona loves the Biscuit books, I get really bored reading them again and again. We were given several that I've tucked away for when she starts to read to herself, LOL.

This Way Ruby - 6 - Fiction -This was an OK story about 6 ducklings, 5 of whom are adventurous and then there's Ruby. Ruby doesn't like to rush around fast to get to the next thing, instead she would rather take things slow and see where she is instead of trying to find new things. When a storm comes up suddenly the 5 get lost until Ruby catches up and shows the way home by the things she had noticed while going slow and looking around.

Creature Count - A Prehistoric Rhyme - 6 - Fiction - Fiona likes this and its OK, just a basic silly story.

Pick a Pup - 6 - Fiction - a ryhyming book that shows all kinds of dogs as a boy is trying to decide which dog to adopt from the shelter.

The Story About Ping - 5 - Fiction - a story about a huge family of ducks who live in a house boat on the Yangtze river in China.

The Littlest Dinosaur - 5 - Fiction - typical runt of the litter feels he's to small to do anything and ends up saving the day story.

The Littlest Dinosaurs Big Adventure - 5 - Fiction - see above.

Little Quack - 5 - basic boring counting book.

Too Many Dinosaurs - 4 - Fiction - silly pointless story.

A Trip to Dinosaur Time - 4 - Fiction - very random little story. Fiona didn't understand the time travel in the story.

Boo's Dragon - 3 - Fiction - very short chapter book. I didn't like it, The girl lied several times, not just about her imaginary creatures which I'm OK with (e.g. I'm OK with her telling her father she see's a dragon which really is just a tree with a dragon like shape, because that's not really a lie, grrrr I hope you follow me because I'm having trouble articulating what I mean).

OK, I'm getting really behind on these posts, so I'm not going to add much more to this one other then pictures :) We did of course do worksheets, writing practice, math (especially graphing for some reason Fiona really likes graphing, I'm sure the fact I usually let her graph mini m+m's has Nothing to do with that.....) and pretty much anything else I can think of. As stated above we went to the zoo this week, the zoo we went to is Lake Tobias. This is a private zoo and a lot of fun. They have a petting area with tons of goats just wandering around to be petted (I wish they had other animals wandering, at least some sheep or ponies or something). As soon as we entered the gates of the zoo Fiona started to ask if she could see the guinea pigs, lol. Its been a year (unfortunately, we tried several times to make plans, but didn't make it there all summer) since we were there last but Fiona still remembered the herd (there is no other word for a group of 100+ guinea pigs that works) of guinea pigs! Children aren't supposed to have that good of memory a year later! Not when we are talking about a three year old remembering something from when she was two! Anyways, even though the guinea pigs are in the petting area the enclosure doesn't give any access to them. Fiona begged so much that the girl at the front of the petting area got out a guinea pig for Fiona to hold :) At Lake Tobias there is also a safari tour, where they drive you around in topless buses to see all the herd animals, which you can pet (from the bus) and feed, its a lot of fun. So onto the Pictures.......

We made "dino eggs" which had little toy dino's baked inside. We hid a dozen around the living room and Fiona did an egg hunt. Afterwards she had the "help" the baby dino's hatch.

Mini M+M graphing

We found an ant hill while on a walk

Fiona's "alien encounter" photo, LOL

Our "D" crafts

Petting the alligator :P

These two fought for 10 minutes! They had paused for a minute, but I think they were getting ready to continue when our guide said we had to go back because the zoo was closing.