BUDSerassic Museum

Today, we celebrate the many discoveries and learning of the Buds Class children through our dinosaur theme. We would like to thank all the parents who came in to visit our BUDSerassic Museum today. If you’ve missed it, no worries, here’s a run down of the displays that were especially curated by the Buds Class children.

Dinosaur Footprints

     Are there any similarities between dinosaurs and us human beings…? After reading books and discussing about dinosaurs during the first few days, the Buds Class children pointed out that just like us, dinosaurs too have fingers and toes! But, it doesn’t look quite the same as ours. What were the differences? The number of fingers and toes were different… and look how sharp their nails were! The Buds Children also got to practice their fine motor skills by tracing their hands.

Dinosaur Eggs (2D)

     Where do dinosaurs come from? Do they come from their mommy’s tummies like we do? What’s the shape of an egg? It’s like a circle but has a narrower top and a wider bottom. This artwork required a collaboration of our older and younger friends’ skills! Our older friends got to practice developing their hand-eye coordination skills, finger control & strength as they had to cut along the egg stencil. Our younger friends were tasked to decorate the dinosaur eggs by painting it using bubble wrap. They were amazed with the kind of pattern it left on the egg and had a wonderful sensory experience!

 Dinosaur Bones

     This activity was targeted for our older friends as they were tasked to stick the bones of the dinosaur they chose. It was interesting to see how our older friends all had different perspectives on how the bones are arranged inside the dinosaurs’ bodies. Some decided to arrange the bones randomly, vertically, or that it should be aligned according to the dinosaur’s body. Each type of dinosaur has its own set of bones… some had bones in its horns, wings and some of them had two or four leg bones.

Dinosaur Lego

     The kids who were only staying for half day decided to build dinosaurs our of Lego blocks!  Through conversations and movements, the children were able to describe the dinosaur they were making. They built a four legged dinosaur, a T-rex, and a dinosaur truck!

Dinosaur Fossils and Paper Mache Eggs

     There were flattened, round-shaped paper clays and small dinosaur toys presented on the table. The children were asked to make dinosaur fossils as part of their sensory experience. The task was to make a print of the dinosaur on the paper clay by pressing the toy  unto the clay. The children learned that if they pressed the dinosaur down too hard, it goes deeper unto the paper clay.

     For the paper mache eggs, children were tasked to rip newspaper into strips. After ripping, they started to “paste” the strips around a balloon to make an egg shape. We waited for a few days until the egg was completely dry and painted it red & blue afterwards.

 Dinosaur Fun Facts

Fact 1: Do you know that a Tyrannosaurus Rex weighed around 4,550 kg to 14,000 kg? If you come to think of it, this is 1000 times of the average weight of Buds children this year!

Fact 2: Do you know that Brachiosaurus was considered as one of the tallest dinosaurs ever lived? They were around 26-30 meters in height. That is like three times the size of Ohana building.

Fact 3: Do you know that a pterodactyl was one of the fiercest flyers ever lived during the prehistoric era? Their wingspan was around 11 meters, 1000 times bigger than the average Buds child’s hand size.

Volcano

     To make our volcano, the children were tasked to rip newspaper into strips.  After ripping it into strips, the children soaked it in water and started to mold it around an empty plastic bottle.  It took us several days to finish the mold of the volcano and to wait for it to dry. After  it had dried, the children painted with various colors of paint until we got the outcome of having a brown and purple volcano. Also during Circle Time, we watched clips of volcanoes erupting and lava coming out from it.

 Heavy the Dinosaur

     Our very own original piece, Heavy the Dinosaur! This is our process art that took us several weeks to finish. Also through Heavy the Dinosaur, we learned a lot of concepts that we could relate to ourselves as human beings.

Phase 1: Conceptualizing how a dinosaur looks by drawing a blueprint. Our dinosaur had a long neck, a head, and four legs

Phase 2: Assembling the body parts of the dinosaur using cardboard boxes

Phase 3: Giving our dinosaur’s skin a color… just like us! We each have a different skin color. We started to paint our dinosaur.

Phase 4: Sketching how our dinosaur’s face would look like. Would it look like us? No! It has five long ears, a big mouth, a zig zag nose, and one big circular eye!

Phase 5: As human beings, we have bones inside of our bodies! We learned about the different bones such as leg bone, neck bone, head bone, and back bone… and figured that all these bones should also be present inside our dinosaur’s body. We pasted bones on our dinosaur and carefully painted it in white.

Phase 6: Adding texture to the dinosaur’s body and face. We all have different “textures” on our skin. Some of us has smooth skin while others have visible hair or little bumps on their skin. We added different types of textures on our dinosaur to represent all of us.

Phase 7: Naming the dinosaur. At last, our dinosaur is now “alive”! But wait, it is missing something… a name! After discussing what our dinosaur can do… we decided to name it “Heavy the Dinosaur”. Why? Because it simply was heavy.

      While our visitors were going around the museum, some of us who finished our touring duties started working on our Christmas decorations by sticking colored special paper on soft laminating paper with Liezel. We are excited to start working on our Christmas ornaments next week!

      After our visitors have left, we all watched the special video that our teachers prepared for us to look back on the many different activities that we had during the dinosaur theme. It was nice to see our faces projected on the wall and it was fun naming all our friends whose photos came out on the video… this made us miss our friends who did not get to join us today. We also had a different way to have our snacks today… we formed  a circle and ate like we were in a picnic. It was a different experience for us and we did a pretty good job when Erika told us to try not to spill any of our food on the floor.

      Before we went out for a walk to the pond, Erika reminded us that Christmas is almost coming which means it is time to sing some of the most beloved Christmas carols. Chiaki and Liezel played their ukuleles for us while we shook our bells to sing ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Feliz Navidad’. After singing some Christmas carols, we read a story about a big man wearing a red suit who is said to be one of the busiest people whenever it’s the holiday season. We read ‘Hurry, Santa!’ by Julie Sykes and listened to the story of the time when Santa Claus woke up late on the Christmas eve and was running late for his duties. While rushing to do his preparations, Santa Claus suddenly had an accident. Uh oh! We wonder if Santa Claus can make it on time to deliver all our presents.

        After a busy morning in our BUDSerassic Museum and having our snacks, we went out for a walk to the pond. We enjoyed the cool breeze and finding fishes swimming in the pond. When we arrived back in school, lo and behold! Santa Claus was there! He was not late! He asked us what we wanted for Christmas and some us asked for trains, fire truck, jeep, and a fish! Unfortunately, Santa Claus couldn’t stay that long as he still has a lot of children to visit. Today, was definitely a jam packed day of fun and surprises. We thank everyone who took time to visit our museum. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Love, Buds Class Children