Lately, the bean bag song has not made the kids as enthusiastic as before and they are more excited about the books. This is an excellent thing, but I know the song needs to stay. It is great to see them get excited about the books and helps reassure me that I'm picking out the right ones for our group.
Our first story was The Three Triceratops Tuff by Stephen Shaskan. This is a tongue-twister take on The Three Billy Goats Gruff classic, but with dinosaurs. I always enjoy re-introducing a classic in such a fun way.
I shared a story called, Who Will Play with Little Dinosaur? with the group using the flannel board. It's a story about a dinosaur who can't seem to find anyone to play with him. He asks his mom, a fish, a bird, and a fern to play but they all have reasons of why they can't. Mom is busy gathering food, fish can't be on land, bird has wings and belongs in the sky, and a fern can't reply back. Little Dinosaur ends up sitting on a rock...a rock that turns out to be a dinosaur egg. Out hatches Little Little Dinosaur and he now has another dino friend.
The group liked this story, but they really miss being able to put up a piece onto the flannel board.
Next, was a reading of Rex Wrecks It! by Ben Clanton. Rex has some friends, but seems to wreck everything they create. Wrecking things becomes a lot more fun when they can wreck havoc together.
I wanted to get one more activity in, so we counted Five Little Dinosaurs using the flannel board and went over their different colors.
Stegosaurus: The Friendliest Dinosaur by Anna Obiols was our next book. I would say this was the least favorite. It tells about all the things a boy does with imagination and his toy dino. It wasn't a favorite of mine either, but somehow ended up as one of my choices.
I tried to squeeze a fourth story in, and barely made it to the end before the kids were getting antsy. If I Had a Raptor by George O'Connor had a somewhat similar storyline to the last book, but I felt the kids liked this one better despite it going on a tad too long for them. I had one child who commented on the illustrations saying they liked the way the dinosaur looked and how "she is so cute."
It was craft time! We made dinosaur mouths out of paper plates and green construction paper. This was more of an effort to get the group to practice their cutting skills than anything. I tried to encourage parents to let their children cut for themselves and they did a good job of balancing helping their child vs. just making the craft for them.
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