Walk the Dinosaur!

*Scroll to the bottom to start my playlist before reading for the full effect

I lead a Carole Marsh book club for some of the local homeschool kids. We are in our second year of this book club. Before this bookclub, I led a Magic Tree House book club for over 3 years. When we read the Magic Tree House books, we read them in consecutive order, starting with book 1 and ending with book 40, which was the most current book written at that time by the author, Mary Pope Osborne. When we started the Carole Marsh series, I followed a suggested reading club list for the first year just to make it easier for me. I had not had time to research all of the Carole Marsh Mystery Series books (there are quite a lot!) and needed to get my list together quickly. As we approached year two of this book club, I began researching the books and putting our reading list together for this year. Having a better feel of who our regularly attending kids are to the club helped me in my decision and of course, the Tiaras had their opinions as well. Imagine!

Tiara 2 is a huge fan of our (very) old friend, the dinosaur. Besides dancing on Broadway, she wants to be an archaeologist and a paleontologist when she grows up. (She also wants to live at home and sees no problem with the fact that we live nowhere close to NY. She plans to commute, so she says.) So her choice for our book club this year was The Mystery of the Missing Dinosaurs. She has been looking forward to the meeting for this book since I initially put the reading list together last fall. And finally, this Thursday (day AFTER tomorrow!), we will be meeting to discuss HER book choice!

The kids normally do a journal entry each month which can be a craft, a written paper or even a drawing from the story. Anything they choose. After we discuss the book, they stand in front of the other kids and share their journal. (They also write two questions from assigned chapters which they ask in front of the other kids during discussion. They enjoy this aspect of being in control of the club and they gain public speaking skills as well which is HUGE!). For this month's meeting, I asked them all to make a dinosaur in place of their normal journal work. They were told they could make it out of paper, clay, salt dough, paper mache, etc. But they are all supposed to make a dinosaur for our meeting. Can't wait to see how well they all do!

The Tiaras have been anticipating the day we made our dinosaurs and today was THE day! The Tiaras both chose to make their dinosaurs out of Crayola's Model Magic which is an awesome product! It hardens like a clay but is a foamy texture while being formed which makes it very fun for the Tiaras. And it is not messy which makes it very fun for me!

So Tiara 1 decided on a Brachiosauras (one of the longnecks). She went with a baby Brachi cracking out of her egg and Tiara 1 decided she didn't want the baby dino to look scary at all. She definitely succeeded and her baby turned out quite well!



Tiara 2 decided on a Triceratops since she received a Webkinz Triceratops for her birthday. Her dino turned out very well also!


Tiara 2 finished her dinosaur long before Tiara 1 so she decided to excavate a Triceratops fossil using her Dinosaur Expedition kit she received for Christmas from her Aunt Jess.

Safety glasses were recommended and since we have no safety glasses, we improvised. And since we homeschool, most days the Tiaras do school in their pajamas. Might as well be as comfortable as possible while learning! We didn't complete our "dig" today but I'm sure we will by Thursday!