Fun, Hands On Dinosaur Unit: Thyreophora - Stegasaurus

The girls have had enormous fun learning about the dinosaurs from the Thyreophora group using the Stegasaurus as an example.

Dinosaurs are classified into two groups dependant on the position of the hips:

Saurischia (lizard hipped dinosaurs)
Ornithiscia (bird hipped dinosaurs)

The Saurischia are further divided into Theropods and Sauropods, while the Ornithiscia are divided into Thyreophora and Cerapods. This week we focused on one of the dinosaurs from the Thyreophora group, namely the Stegasaurus. The name Thyreophora means ‘shield bearers’ and this group includes armored dinosaurs such as the Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus.

Dinosaur Writing Assignments

We did a mixture of narrations and copywork in addition to individual writing assignments:

A7 read all about the Stegosaurus and then narrated it back to me. I typed her narration into StartWrite and she copied it out:

B5 did the same, although hers was a lot shorter:

A7 made up a dinosaur shaped poem (in the shape of a stegosaurus). She did this all by herself, and I could see that the work we had done with rhyming using Dinosaurumpus had really paid off. I loved this!

It reads:

Steggy is remarkable,

She’s big and fat.

She is a herbivore,

No doubt about that!

Maybe that’s why

She’s so big and fat!

Both girls drew and wrote about their ideal pet dinosaur. A7 made hers up after drawing a Stegosaurus which she named Steggy:

Whilst B5 drew her ideal pet dinosaur and did some copywork. We used these excellent worksheet from Beth:

Dinosaur Maths

As both girls use a separate maths program daily we did not do too much with this.

B5 played around with some shapes dinosaurs which I found here. These were huge fun to do, matching the coloured shapes to make two different Stegosaurus:

I printed out some dot to dot for both girls to do. A7 found these simple whereas B5 needed a bit of help. I found these sheet here:

Dinosaur Read Alouds

I read this book outloud at bed time and they loved it. A7 in particular has an almost photographic memory for facts and will often discuss what she has learnt from this book the next morning. A great introduction to Dinosaurs and the Bible:

Dinosaur Audio-Visual

A7 has been listening to a Dinosaurs and the Bible course and thoroughly enjoying it. The girls also watched Walking with the Dinosaurs DVD:

Dinosaur Geography

We did some research about where in the world Stegosaurus bones have been found. I had some dinosaur stickers (from a dinosaur Magazine). We chose the Stegosaurus stickers and printed off a world map, sticking one sticker on the country in which Stegosaurus bones have been found:

Dinosaur Science

I’ve already posted about our dinosaur experiment to investigate the effect gastroliths (gizzard stones) have in breaking down plant material. It was a terribly easy and fun experiment which the girls thoroughly enjoyed:

Dinosaur Sewing

We used the following kit from The Works to make ‘Steggy’:

I did most of this one as the instructions were a bit tricky to follow. Next time I’m hoping they will do more:

Dinosaur Art

I printed a how to draw a stegosaurus from TeachingIdeas which I gave to A7 to do. She did this all by herself and whilst she was very critical of it, I thought she did a fabulous job:

Stegosaurus Excavation

I had purchased an inexpensive kit which I bought from The Works. Fortunately we had some very decent tools from a Thames and Kosmos kit I also own (which is so much better quality). That said, this kept my girls occupied for almost four hours!

When they began they were on their own, but not a lot of time passed before L and C joined in to help:

And then T was anxious not to miss the fun:

They did leave the girls in peace for a short time. And oh my goodness, the mess!!

And their faces:

Then T figured knocking plaster apart and putting dinosaurs together was waaaay more fun than Psychology so he rejoined them:

By this time the girls were ready for a bath…..

…or a hose down!

Whilst L ran the bath, C cleared the table and I hoovered the whole of the downstairs (the plaster got everywhere!), T put the finishing touches to the stegosaurus’ skeleton and make his littlest sister a very happy girl indeed!