We did it! First semester of kindergarten and our first unit study is complete! In fairness, we are rounding out the year with an Advent Unit Study for the month of December so we aren’t totally done with the semester. But I am so proud of my boy and what he has learned in such a short period.
I will admit, there were good and not so good times as we got into the rhythm of school and even afterwards even though my oldest loves learning and his favorite thing going into the semester was dinosaurs. He still loves the dinosaurs but tonight as I told him how proud I am of him completing the whole study and getting his “Junior Paleontologist” certificate, he got upset and told me he didn’t want to be a Paleontologist when he grows up. Maybe I should have taken him through the study a bit more quickly. HA!
The study we picked is a creation-based dinosaur unit study that you can print for free (no signup required!) from Homeschool Share. It is designed to be completed in 8 days but we were doing it as a supplement to our other essential subjects and curriculums so I initially aimed to complete each day’s work in a week. In the end we ended up spending almost 14 weeks going through it as we added in lots of extras and field trips, and the arrival of cold and flu season and the family schedule necessitated some flexibility. But that’s one of the reasons we homeschool, right?! I’ll be writing another post after the holidays about what our first semester looked like bigger picture, with all of the subjects, our routine, etc.
The unit study recommends some fun books and then primarily follows the Bible and Ken Ham’s What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs on a day to day basis. So I didn’t have to worry about contradictions in the curriculum on creation theology. Almost all of the books in the study were at our library or I was able to get them through the Prospector library loan system. We also purchased a couple of great books from the Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference (T is For T. Rex: Some of God’s Most Amazing Creatures from A-Z), and Answers in Genesis (Dinosaurs for Little Kids). They were not in the study but I highly recommend them.
My son already loved dinosaurs and even had his last birthday themed around them at Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison, CO. But he still learned so much from the study and each day was focused on a different theme which followed from the reading and carried through the activities. For instance, when we read Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones, we made our own dinosaur fossils and learned about the margin of error in a fossil as compared to an original bone that was deposited. We had a lot of fun but also learned a lot about creation, classification, extinction theories and fossils, etc. Take a look at this quick video if you are more visual and want to see what this all looked like. But be sure to check back for links to the resources we used.
We did numerous other projects too such as paper mache dinosaur eggs and dinosaur dioramas. I was careful to not obsess over following the study to a “t” if we were ready to learn about the topic but couldn’t quite muster the same level of involvement all the time. In place of the homemade dinosaur dig activity, we used a great little National Geographic Dinosaur Dig kit. And in place of the more involved fossil making activity involving milk cartons and plaster of Paris (neither of which I keep on hand), we did a quick and easy white glue and modeling clay option I found on You Tube. Some of the ”days” weren’t as demanding in terms of the craft and cleanup which was nice and we sometimes swapped ”days“ depending on our schedule. The study included great printables to go along with those days and my son ultimately made an amazing lap book to include his printables and photos of the other three-dimensional crafts he’d done.
One of the things I loved was that my four year old usually was able to be just as much a part of the study as well. My two year old even got to participate sometimes when he wasn’t napping. This is precisely why I love a good unit study. My kids are close enough in age that I love to be able to help them learn about certain topics of interest together and break away for more ability-specific lessons.
Our home was really all dinosaur the last few months. We loved cranking up We are the Dinosaurs by the Laurie Berkner Band as we stopped around roaring, and I created a unit study table in our foyer to display their creations and our dinosaur library books of the moment. We also found dinosaur chicken nuggets at Sam’s, dinosaur gummies from Dollar Tree, and tapped into our collection of dinosaur puzzles, magnets, and of course toys. I purchased some Dinosaur activity books, Disney’s Color and Play The Good Dinosaur coloring book (below), and a Learn to Draw Dinosaurs book as well and the kids enjoyed adding those to the mix with word searches, mazes and some guided drawing.
We also got to take the study out of the house as we searched for materials for our dioramas in the back yard and we took a couple of great field trips. We started our semester off early with a visit to Glen Rose, TX (“the dinosaur capital of Texas”) during our family vacation this summer. We also visited the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and got to see the amazing Prehistoric Journey exhibition which is always one of our favorites but that’s always the field trip where the rubber meets the road on the year counts.
Perhaps one of my favorite things though, was being able to congratulate my son for completing the study this semester and watching as he presented to his Daddy all that he had learned though his lap book. Not only was I so proud of him, but I’ll be honest, I was proud of me. This first semester it was easy to question, are we doing enough, learning enough, etc. But having that lap book in our hands and seeing everything he’d done and all he had learned was a thrill. I am so grateful to all the wonderful authors, homeschool moms and organizations that produce such amazing materials to help me connect with my children and be a part of this with them.
