Dinosaurs!

Pretend school was all about dinosaurs today. Since I was "teaching", (not sure that's the proper word, I think leading is much more appropriate...) I started the day by making some dinosaur shaped muffins. Thanks to my nifty spiffy dinosaur cupcake/muffin pan, they looked pretty darn cute. Unfortunately for Alex & Ben's classmates I did not veganize the recipe so they couldn't enjoy the muffins. We read the Dinotrain book, watched Dinosaur Train on PBS, did a rubbing of a sandpaper dinosaur footprint, and stamped all of our toy dinosaurs feet on inkpads and then on paper to make all kinds of fun dinosaur tracks. Alex & Ben are quite well versed in the names of the various dinosaurs. It's quite amusing listening to a not-quite 2 year old ask for a stegosaurus by name, and then actually knowing which dinosaur is really a stegosaurus! Aside from watching Dinosaur train (which we did before everyone else came over) all of our fun activities managed to take up a whopping 30 minutes! Usually we can keep the kiddos occupied for at least an hour in pretend school. Oh well, we had lots of great playtime, a fun lunch with everyone and a well earned nap later in the afternoon.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, pretend school is our version of preschool. A couple of my friends and I decided that we didn't really want to send our kids to a "real" preschool yet we wanted them to have some sort of learning environment. So, 3 days a week we get our munchkins together and try to teach them something. We have had lots of really great, fun activities and Alex & Ben just love it. They are always so excited to go to pretend school! Here's a picture of the "class":