What’s in your sand table? . . . diggin’ for nonsense bones and a freebie.

There is nothing better than a sand table . . . unless it’s two sand tables.  Right now in my class I’m using my normal sand table and a make shift sand table that’s actually a short sided plastic storage container that you would slide under a bed but it’s the perfect size if you don’t have a sandtable readily available in your classroom. 

Because my students are going crazy over all our dinosaur activities this week, I decided to break out this ‘extra’ sandtable and make a little nonsense word game for them to play while pretending to be paleontologist.

First I purchased milk bone dog biscuits. The cheaper the better. Then I painted them white.  After they dried, I went ahead and printed real and nonsense words on them. The I put them in the storage unit with this very bright blue sand.  I like it because it makes the bones stick out.   I was even able to differentiate this activity to meet various readiness levels of my kinders.  Some of the bones are printed with black letters, those are the 3-lettered nonsense and real words, and some are printed with pink letters, those are the 4-lettered nonsense and real words.  Students are instructed which color to look for when ‘digging.’ 

I allow them to use paint brushes, small tongs and tweezers to extract the bones very carefully.  If it’s a bone they can read they print their ‘findings’ on their recording sheet, either as a real or nonsense word.  The first person to fill all both sides of their recording sheet is the expert paleontologist. 

I know there are so many of you that don’t have sand tables and I didn’t want you to miss out on the fun, so I concocted you a little differentiated freebie for you to meet common core standards that is actually two activities in one.

I hope you ‘dig’ it (get it?). And if you do and your interested in other dinosaur activities that are differentiated and address common core standards, please check out my TpT store or click on the pictures below.