Today is indeed a Traveling Tuesday as the kids and I will be heading home after 18 wonderful days in Colorado celebrating marriages and saying good-byes, spending countless hours with friends and family.
One of the reasons we were able to stay 18 days is because we are homeschooling, there was no need to rush the girls back to Florida for school after the big events. That doesn’t mean however, that we’ve all been on vacation!
We’ve maintained a regular school routine while away, doing the same amount of school work we would do at home only breaking on weekends and holidays. What we did different than at home, though, was to undertake a special project while we were here: dinosaurs.
Colorado is a hotbed of prehistoric discovery. From the first apatosaurus and stegosaurus bones ever discovered in the world to giant tyrannosaurus and triceratops skulls, paleontologists and amateurs are still pulling bones out of the rocks of Colorado today. So what better topic to work on for school that the Denver dinosaurs?
While I focused most of the girls’ math and language arts assignments around dinosaurs, the majority of our dinosaur study was through visiting local museums and sites.
Our first stop was Dinosaur Ridge. Not too far outside Denver, near the town of Morrison, Dinosaur Ridge is a natural geological formation which is part of the Morrison Formation and “dinosaur super highway” and houses many dinosaur tracks and other fossils as well as a few bones still hidden in the rocks.
While the sights are pretty awesome, the walk is no joke! While there is a shuttle that takes people up the mountain and around, we decided to walk on the paved road which was not too bad with the strollers and even Honeybun was able to do the entire hike.
There is also a small visitor’s center and gift shop with a digging pit and life size models (a second visitor on the other side is supposed to be opening soon).
Our second stop was at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (or as I knew it, the Denver Natural History Museum). There is a complete T-Rex skeleton as soon as you walk into the museum and while we did almost the entire museum, the main purpose of our visit and where we spent the most time was the Prehistoric Journey exhibit which takes you through a journey from dinosaurs to modern mammals. The exhibit includes many wonderful volunteers with hands-on expereinces who are so kind with the kids and shared so much information with the girls.
There is also a new Discovery Zone for younger kids which includes a climb-on dinosaur and digging pit (with rubber pellets instead of sand which was awesomely clean!). We also happened to catch a special show about dinosaurs and their eggs which all the kids really enjoyed.
A lesser known and much smaller experience is Discovery Park in Golden. A small city park close to the high school, the park has a rock formation dinosaur the little ones can climb on as well as a sand pit for digging up bones (though you need to bring your own tools for digging, we just used our hands!) and a small climbing area. While small, we met a friend there and spent hours playing!
Our last dinosaur stop was at the Morrison Natural History Museum. At first sight, I didn’t expect much. The building is small (a former ranch house) but the experience was amazing! The museum is hands-on, housing some of the original bones found in Colorado as well as many tracks. We were the only people there the day we visited and were given a private guided tour with a guide who was super informative and educational for the girls (and all us adults even learned new things!)
There were also live reptile relatives and the kids were able to pet a snake as well as a working paleontology lab where the girls were able to do a little work digging out a real dinosaur bone from a stone. There is also a dig pit outside with a full stegosaurus skeleton. But my favorite part was the life-size models of dinosaur babies, who knew the giants started out so tiny!
