Finding the Beauty - Day 3

Lego brachiosaurus.

Weekend Pursuits

I patched pants:

From winter 08 09

Luke set the dinosaurs up all over the living room:

From winter 08 09

And Owen did really cool things with play dough:

From winter 08 09

I still haven't figured out how exactly he did that with the play dough.

But I know this: it is fun to have kids who can figure out how to play with limited adult intervention and no, or at least few, injuries to people. Or furniture.

When Dinosaurs Ruled... Our Home

The signs are everywhere: the dino box, open in the living room, dinosaurs strewn all over the house. The dinosaur books, dozens of them, taking up so much library shelf space that they had to be given their own shelf.

Not that they're ever on the shelf - mostly, they are currently being read, or have been left open to the page at which they were last read, on the couch.

They are piled on each other, usually with a kid or two nested into the space next to the pile.

Dinosaurs have provided a window into morality and perspective for 4 year-old Owen, trying to wrap his mind around the idea that velociraptors and other meat-eaters aren't necessarily evil, just really quick predators. He shouts at them when he sees pictures of carnivores catching herbivores, or stealing eggs, or hunting birds... he will ask questions such as "Mama, why is that dino eating a bird? He should stop that! Velociraptor, don't do that!" I won't get into the tongue-lashing I got when I suggested that we, too eat birds, but I think Owen became a vegetarian today.

Luke is now a time traveler, and brings back about 10 dinos' DNA each morning (it's his watch, you see, that makes this possible); then, Owen spends the rest of the time before lunch turning into those dinosaurs, curling up and reading to his "dino baby." Or insisting that his T-rex have a chat with Black Bear, a favorite stuffed bear with a French accent - don't ask me, I just live here.

Anyone interested in dino artwork, may I recommend How to Draw Dinosaurs, an Usborne Activity book which we like because of the free-flowing and visually unique images that can be made by even little ones. Our other favorite is Paper Dinosaurs, a book of origami dinos that we had the great luck of finding at the library.

When Luke wants to resarch dinosaur books, he's been going to Better World Books, an organization whose mission is to promote literacy worldwide. They accept donations of used books and then sell them, as well as new books, free of charge in the US. Luke will go the Better World website and write down names and authors of books he wants to own, and usually will shout out loud exclamations like "Mom! This book's only $3.98!" Yes, for anyone who didn't see the significance, Luke actually writes this information down; a breakthrough for a boy who could not be cajoled into writing nearly anything 6 months ago.

Dinosaurs have been good to us in many ways: the boys desire endless facts about them, create dinosaur scenes in pictures and origami, want to hear and read dino stories, incorporate them into their fantasy play, and consider the ethics of omnivorism.

A Return to the Time of the Dinosaurs

From Fall Blog

When Luke was about 4, he fell hard for dinosaurs; then he dropped them like a hot potato 2 years later.

But the dinosaurs have returned with a vengeance in the last week or so. The catalyst seems to have been when I pulled out the giant box o' dinos from the basement, mostly, I thought, for Owen's amusement.

From Fall Blog

Suddenly, Luke is flying around like Quetzalcoatlus, using his watch to take him back in time so that he can "research" various dinosaurs, lamenting the lack of dinosaur books in our house for older kids, watching the entire Walking with Dinosaurs series - thank you, Netflix! - spouting facts gleaned from the gazillion dino books we do have (some of which are quite advanced), begging to go on a field trip to a science museum to check out their dinos...

I have managed to squeeze in a little math and writing into this new obsession:

From Fall Blog

I'm the tip of the diplodocus' tail, and my guys are at the tip of its' nose, 82 feet away - or, if you're on a football field, 30 yards minus 8 feet away!

Here are some museum photos, from our visit today:

From Fall Blog

From Fall Blog

From Fall Blog

The museum of science in Boston is good for more than dinos, though, and we found lots of other cool stuff - Luke, up top, is stopping the spinning discs by spinning his own the other way. Owen, below, is learning how sound vibrations can make a pattern. Well, sort of...

From Fall Blog

Here's the skyline as seen from the museum:

From Fall Blog

I'm glad to be back in the world of dinosaurs; if the fad continues, I'll post some of our more educational activities and resources.