Another delayed post… but interesting all the same. I hope they are helpful to someone and of nothing else, a wonderful record of times when the kids and I had fun learning about something new and just a bit unique.

While 2014 has not had us digging deep into the dinosaur world like we have, we did find the time to learn all about this Australian herbivore. The Minmi is named after a water body in Australia and is one of the most complete sets of fossils. Things like stomach content, skin texture and all sorts of fine details are saved in the fossils. It is believed that this dinosaur was often washed to sea and preserved as it was definitely a 4 legged land mammal.

Emanuel found this dinosaur most interesting due to its many armored plates and its obvious herbivore nature. We had a great discussion about where Australia is and how this was NOT a large armored dinosaur. Now we did have a rather interesting video by La Trobe University. Australian Dinosaur – Minmi.

And the links were actually plentiful on this dinosaur:

• EnchantedLearning HERE
• Australian Museum HERE
• Age of Dinosaurs HERE
• Find the Best has a great picture HERE
• Dinosaur of the Week HERE
• KidsDinos.com HERE
• The National Dinosaur Museum has a lengthy article HERE
• Wiki has their article HERE
• We got our picture off of deviantArt by hyphenatedsuperhero HERE
• We FOUND this dinosaur in a library book – The Big Book of Dinosaurs by DK.

You do NOT want to know how old these resource posts are!! EEP! But we did love every minute of our dino journey. Sadly I was not on the ball and pre-loading a cute kid pic for this one. BUT I hope the info comes in handy! 

The “shovel lizard” Lystrosaurus came to our attention strictly by looks! It straddles the reptile and mammal (like) groups with its unusual characteristics. This VERY successful animal was found all over the world. A herbivore, it was found in the early Triassic period with concentration of fossils in Southern Africa, Asia and interestingly enough… Antarctica! The size of a pig, it is stout and short… ran on four legs and quite the comical looking creature. You can also see this dinosaur on the iPad app Fantastic Dinosaurs HD.

Our video is called Walking With Monsters: Clumsy Lystrosaurus posted by Hritzness.

And for our links… for such a prolific dinosaur we really had a limited number!

• Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
• KidsDinos.com (which has the era for the dinosaur at a slightly odd place) HERE
• Prehistoric Wildlife HERE
• Animal a Day HERE
• Wiki HERE
• And our colouring page from Super Coloring HERE

FOR PLATYPUS RESOURCES PLEASE GO TO “PLATYPUS IN DEPTH”

February 19-20

Of all the creatures out there the kids chose the Platypus to learn about… This rather unusual and unique mammal has been on their minds for some time. Actually since their first viewing a the children’s show Phineas and Ferb with its spy/pet character Perry the Platypus. With my still getting over a rather nasty head cold we didn’t dive right into our library books BUT we did discuss what knowledge we already had – regarding the platypus AND Perry. There had been a brief post episode chat about the platypus on Wild Kratts too, the boys told me about it. So I was rather impressed as to what facts they could come up with!

Zander’s “real” platypus and Perry as a spy out of Lego

Gavin’s Perry the pet and Perry the spy (note the hat)

Of course you and I know that P is for Platypus, but did you know that platypus can be rainbow coloured? Trinity assured me that it is very possible!

P is for Platypus!

We will be posting an entire blog that stands alone with all of our platypus links and resources. While I really am not the person to be creating a lapbook etc myself I love being able to collect and share all the items we combine together to supplement the lapbooks etc others have come up with. Like I did with the Chinese New Year poster I plan on doing so with the rest of our unit studies. Emanuel has requested PENGUIN after we are done the platypus and, also to look forward to, we are covering St. Patrick’s Day (poster) and Dr. Seuss’ birthday (mini folders) on March 2.

The boys with their tracks and the animals that make them

Zander and his Platypus with moving legs (not sure about the crazy smile, I think he just likes making faces!)

Emanuel and his Australian colouring page

Today Emanuel and Trinity watched Dinosaur Train on the laptop and then drew me up two meteor showers! Very pretty! I am looking forward to being able to read to them and get to the real story time and dinosaur fun!

Meteors

Of course Echo had to make her mark on our day… first with a mess, then dancing and then… pouting… she is talented!

Turn your back for a minute…

Boogie baby

/pout pout

Wednesday had us reading our first platypus book – Platypuses by Sara Louise Kras. We discussed where Australia is in comparison to where we are in North America. I have a tiny globe I picked up for a dollar or so from Michaels that worked to show them where we are, Australia is, where China is and of course where Aunty Esther and Uncle Ted are from… oh and where Nana and Baba are right now! I really want to invest in a good globe eventually. They tend to run rather expensive for the fancier ones with stands but I think it would be a great investment.

Sorry about the flash, but the link above will take you to purchase or has the info for you to find the book at your local library

We are starting to touch on St. Patrick’s Day a little too, just colouring pages and word searches but it is always fun to start thinking about it now. It think this is going to be a rather impressive poster, heavy on the green and gold!

St Patrick’s Day themed math problems

There was a new Wild Kratts to enjoy – we learned all about termites this time! I love how excited the kids get about each episode.

Termites

Gavin spent some time on his sewing. We are trying to get back on track with that. I love sitting together working on our crafts!

Stitching away

So we are not the most exciting of people to read about this week BUT we did learn a lot about the platypus! And thanks to the existence of Facebook I was able to share an image a friend posted of the most adorable baby platypuses! A combination of iPad, Facebook and absolute cuteness! I promise much more in the way of platypus knowledge and more interesting endeavors as this cold subsides and we move onto all the other interesting schooling items we have planned so check back!

Awwwwww