After we finished our Botany Study, the girls decided that they wanted to learn about dinosaurs next!  I knew absolutely nothing about dinosaurs, so I had to do a bit of my own research before we got started.  I finally decided on beginning with learning about fossils since they are the clues that tell us pretty much everything we know about dinosaurs right now.

We began by learning about the science of paleontology with these cards to understand some of the definitions of the words we would be seeing for the next several months of our dinosaur study.  We used several of our dinosaur books [see full book list below] to learn about what clues could be learned from fossils, and then dove right in.

The girls loved trying to match illustrations of dinosaurs with photographs of their fossils with cards from Every Star is Different’s Dinosaur Unit Science and Culture Printable Pack 1.

I had several different dinosaur fossil works spread throughout our homeschool preschool classroom for this part of the unit study:

In the Art section, I had some fossil rubbing plates that showed dinosaur fossils alongside an outline of each type of dinosaur.

I also had an art tray for making play doh fossil impressions — read how I made the plaster fossil molds HERE.

In the Practical Life section, I had trays with fossil digs in them so the girls could each dig up their own dinosaur fossils.

In the Language section, I put out fossil figure to salt dough impression matching — read how I made the impressions HERE.

We rely heavily on wonderful children’s books for all of our themed studies, and here are the books we used to study fossils as part of our dinosaur study:

Usborne’s Encyclopedia of World History

The Complete Book of Dinosaurs, by Dougal Dixon

Dinosaurium, by Lily Murray

Ultimate Dinopedia, by Don Lessem

Dinosaur Encyclopedia, by IglooBooks

Inside-Outside Dinosaurs, by Roxie Munro

Stay tuned as we continue our Montessori dinosaur study by examining types of dinosaurs and the eras in which they lived!

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