In my research about Texas I came across a great book that had a story about the life of dinosaurs in Texas. So of course we had to research some of the listed ones. We did this a little differently than Emanuel and I usually do it when we solo learn. Instead I read them the information and one of the twins wrote the main points. The other and Emanuel then coloured our picture. These are all going to go into our Texas binder when we finish our unit in the end of May. Our original source of our list was from the book Dinosaur Hunt by Karen Carr. You can get to our resource page HERE.

Our first dinosaur was the slower moving carnivore from the Cretaceous period the Acrocanthosaurus also known as Acro. This therapod was found in Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona. Potentially one of the smarter predators it went after slower moving dinosaurs mainly. Its front legs/arms were longer than a T-Rex’s and much more useful. Definitely a dinosaur to watch out for. For our links we used some old favourites and some new ones as well…

• Jurassic Park Wikia HERE
• EnchantedLearning HERE
• Dinosaurs.About.com HERE
• KidsDinos.com HERE
• Age of Dinosaurs HERE
• NaturalSciences.org has a great resource that we did not get to using for an activity guide. A little more in depth  than we wanted to go with a light overview with multiple dinosaurs. HERE
• National Geographic Kids book page HERE
• Wikipedia HERE
• Our colouring page is from Education.com HERE

Dinosaur #2 was the Pleurocelus… a 4 legged herbivore also from the Cretaceous period. Found in Texas, Maryland and Utah it had longer front legs than back and so mimics the appearance of a giraffe. In fact, it is believed it may have walked on its front toes! It was a fitting meal for our Acrocanthosaurus. Of course we have links to share.

• Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
• DinoDictionary HERE
• EnchantedLearning (mid page) HERE
• Texas Parks and Wildlife HERE. They also had our colouring page HERE.
• Wikipedia has a discussion about the actual name determination and defining  that we did NOT cover but you can read more about that under the article titled Astrodon HERE

Our third dinosaur was one that Emanuel and I had already covered – the Hypsilophodon. So we did a brief overview and jumped list on our backlogged dino posts to put up the one we covered you can read about that HERE. This plant eater was included in our dinosaurs of Texas book but I do admit to finding it placed mostly in Europe.

Our fourth and final dinosaur was the Coloborhynchus. This dinosaur was a flyer and amazingly enough has given us a NEW term for what it eats – a PISCIVORE… fish eater! Emanuel is PUMPED! A new term to hunt under. There is some rather contradictory information about it as apparently there is some dispute as to whether it is its own dinosaur or falls under another name. We did enjoy our rather limited information and of course seeing it in our dinosaur book. Our links…

• Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
• Prehistoric Wildlife.com HERE
• Science Direct HERE
• Wiki HERE and HERE
• Many and varied images on my Google search HERE
• Our colouring page thanks to deviantArt titled Coloborhynchus Attack by HondariNundu HERE.

June 3-5

We had some very exciting moments when the mail called for Echo to get a pair of scissors… one look at her smile and those child safety scissors in her hand and I sent Trinity and her long and seemingly TEMPTING hair in the opposite direction. Together we were somewhat successful.

With 4 scooters in the house and the hunt for a 5th ongoing the kids are really working together to share and teach EVERYONE how to ride them. I think we lucked out with the 3 wheel version I found Echo at a garage sale. Definitely a confidence builder for her so far!

We continued our week with a walk first thing in the morning to the nearest park. It was quite the walk, we had to avoid the usual walking path and bridge with all the rainfall… too many bugs and the water levels everywhere are so high it seemed smarter to walk the roads there. We spooked a bunny… they are all over the place this spring…

And then we played our hearts out at the park. It is so nice to go and have Echo able to handle herself pretty much solo now!

Super exciting… we managed to assemble our Texas binder! You can find our resource page HERE. I did not link all the books we used but have listed titles and authors. I am always amazed when we go to assemble at the actual AMOUNT of stuff we have completed to put into our books. This will definitely not be our only time visiting Texas as a topic but we certainly enjoyed our first experience.

We also had a run to the mall on Wednesday… errands coupled with education about water tables…

AND geocaching in the sunshine!! Ok maybe more playing in the sunshine but we did find at least one!

So much nature!

Echo decided to round off our day with officially starting our Canada overview. After all what is July 1st but CANADA DAY!

The weather so far has been so accommodating that on Thursday we were finally able to go to the rather well known Minnehaha Falls. The water level was SUPER high so we did not do the whole circuit. But we saw some amazing vantage points.

Got to enjoy the beautiful green everywhere while we Geocached…

And even dipped our feet CAREFULLY in the water. The current was amazingly strong all over the place and a portion of the river where you could normally wade rather far in really wasn’t overly safe.

But it was gorgeous!

After all that sunshine it was back home for another journal completed! Well done Trinity!

I love looking back at these days and portions of weeks and seeing just how much enjoyment we are taking from all aspects of our days! This is going to be a summer to remember.