Sensory Activity: Frozen Dinosaur Excavation
This sensory activity was during the Dinosaur Theme week. Dinosaurs were placed in gelatin and then put in the freezer. During the activity, the children used pipettes to squirt warm water on the frozen gelatin to melt it and used tweezers to free the dinosaurs within the gelatin. This activity had multiple developmental goals. The children had to work together to free the dinosaurs from the large frozen gelatin block, this gave the children the opportunity to develop in the social and emotional domain. To increase language skills, they talked to each other about the process of how to free the dinosaurs. In the cognitive domain, children were asked to keep track of the number of dinosaurs they had freed. In this activity the children had practice with their fine motor skills by using the pipettes and tweezers and they practiced their gross motor skills by squishing the gelatin in their hands. Another way that this activity was worthwhile in a developmental aspect was on the adaptive level, in order to free the dinosaurs they had to be persistent and patient.
Cooking-Dinosaur Egg Nests
During Dinosaur theme week, the children made their own dinosaur egg nests out of pretzels, rice cereal, raisins, apples, Sun Butter, and marshmallows. By relating the food items with items that could be in nests, provided a cognitive objective. For example, the pretzels could be sticks or twigs and the marshmallows represented the dinosaur eggs. With this snack, children practiced language skills by following directions and asking others about what they were putting in their dinosaur egg nests. Hand-eye coordination and fine motors skills were practiced by using tweezers to pick up items to put in their egg nests (muffin tins).