Dinosaurs!

Well, the dinosaurs have definitely taken over our house. Out came the bucket-o-dinos from the garage. Out came the robot dinosaurs. We have checked out several detailed, not-so-detailed, simple and complex books about dinosaurs of all types from the library. Dinosaurs counting, doing their abc's, going to sleep, chasing people, showing up out of nowhere...The kids have played dinosaur video games, including the Walking With Dinosaurs game, which has a very complicated and fun time line to fill in with dinosaur pictures and names, the likes of which most of us have never heard of!

There have been several videos watched and rewatched about dinosaurs, including one of Eva's favorites, The Land Before Time (and all of the seven or eight! follow up episodes, which aren't nearly as good as the original, in my opinion) as well as Dinosaur and Dinotopia and of course, Walking with Dinosaurs. And did you know there is a Walking with Prehistoric Animals (I can't remember the exact title). Samuel liked this one better than the original one with Dinosaurs. The favorite, by far, has been Chased by Dinosaurs and Allosaurus (the story of Al, the allosaurus). Both specials are made by Walking with Dinosaurs, so the graphics are amazing. And there is much theory woven into a story about how the dinosaurs looked and lived and enjoyed their time on Earth so many years ago.

Last night we read a great book, Did Dinosaurs eat Pizza, which talked about what we don't know about dinosaurs. I enjoyed reading this after Walking with Dinosaurs because it focused on what we know for sure about dinosaurs and what are theories and guesses and ideas about how dinosaurs may have lived. Eva was very happy to find out that some of the momma prehistoric beasties may not have just abandoned their young like the narrator said they did. She was very happy it was just a theory!

In the car Samuel likes to go over many of the dinosaurs and what we know about them. He likes to list off the dinosaurs that *most* people know about, the old standbys like stegosaurus, triceratops, t-rex, you know the usuals...And then he lists some of the dinosaurs that only experts know about. I can't remember those right now and am not sure if he includes me in with the experts or not. I do know that he lists himself as a certified dinosaur expert and on most day he even includes Eva!