Dinosaur ROAR!

To help wrap up our dinosaur/reptile unit, we headed to Cosi to see the dinosaur exhibit before it went (wait for it...) extinct. This is a special, traveling exhibit that was at Cosi over the summer and it will be gone after Labor Day. I wanted to wait until we were in our dino-thematic unit and all the summer camps & vacationing families were back in school before we had our visit. And, boy, was I ever so glad that we waited because we practically had all of Cosi & the exhibit to ourselves! (I love this time of year!) 

 The exhibit consists primarily of animatronic dinosaur scenes. There are also several stations where you can "be the dinosaur" by maneuvering through a video simulation. You had to find food, water & friends for your dino-you while avoiding predators. Though only 2 & 5, both my kids actually did pretty well with this game (Kyrie more than Degen, but Degen was quite content to sit with me while I played). Kyrie was very proud that her triceratops survived, especially after I lost 2 triceratops in tragic T-Rex attacks.

The kids also had the chance to see what the animatronic dinosaurs were made of and how they moved by using a button board to control a robotic dinosaur.

There was also a jeep that the kids could drive through dinosaur country. I don't think that the steering wheels (there were 4 of them) actually had any sort of control of the scenery, but the kids didn't mind at all.

Kyrie giving vital instructions on our dino jeep tour.

 

The kids had the most fun going through an educational maze that had several stations with interactive activities. We learned some cool facts and then practiced some dino-stomping and flying. We put together our own dinosaurs, climbed a fossil-studded rock wall and tried our hand at uncovering fossils as junior paleontologists.

Before we left, we also got to touch & hold some real dinosaur fossils: an egg, a tooth and 2 kinds of dino-poop! We went through the entire exhibit and had so much fun that after lunch we went back and did the whole thing all over again! At dinner tonight, Kyrie was able to tell Darren several new facts that she had learned about dinosaurs (including how paleontologists can identify a fossil as dino-poop). This was an absolutely perfect way for us to end our thematic unit!