I wasn’t planning on going back to school (we took a nice long Christmas break) until next Tuesday, but the kids really wanted to go back to school now so today we started our dinosaurs unit.

• Discussed fact/non-fiction vs. fiction
• Discussed what science fiction is
• Learned the terms paleontology and paleobotany as well as paleo, ology, and botany
• Discussed what the term dinosaur means
• Read and discussed quotes at the beginning of Jurassic Park
• Read intro of Jurassic Park
• Painted the styrofoam pieces of our DNA model
• Read prologue of Jurassic Park
• Discussed parts of the dictionary entry of raptor
• Made pages for their Dinosaur Notebooks (Ani copied entire definition of raptor; Cameron copied shortened version of definition of raptor; both drew a picture of their concept of a raptor)

Ani painting part of the DNA model