Slice - A Little Bit Overboard

When I promised that I would put together a Dinosaur Day program for my Cub Scout Pack, I knew I could do it. After all, I am a teacher, right? Our pack meetings are only about an hour long, so I'd just need to have four or five stations that are....

1) Educational. Heck, I got this. I'm a freaking TEACHER! I have super powers.

2) Fun. Oh, hmm... it's dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are cool. How can anything about dinosaurs not be fun?

3) Active. I did mention this was a group of boys?
Boys who seem to vibrate while standing in place.
Boys who like nothing more than running in circles and shouting (they think they are whispering). Boys who never seem to be able to slow down.

Crap. What did I get myself into?

For some reason, I just couldn't get my brain to settle into a plan. I scoured Pinterest.  (If you need anything, here's the board) http://www.pinterest.com/lleullin/dino-day/ I wrote down ideas. Brainstorming is my specialty. It's that abstract random in me that helps generate ideas but is awful at nailing things down.

I bought adorable little dinosaurs so I could make little eggs that could be excavated. Then I reconsidered, because I thought that would take too long to make almost ninety of them. So instead I spent HOURS trying to figure out what else to do with my new flock of dino-buddies. In the end, I bit the bullet and made the eggs.

The next crisis? In order to actually be educational, it would help if I knew which dinosaurs were represented in the bunch. Several were obvious. T. Rex and Stegosaurus are easy to identify, even for a mother whose boys left their dinosaur obsession years ago. One has a bizarre shaped head. Google is my friend, and one "Dinosaur with a weird shaped head" search later and I'd identified it as Parasaurolophus. Another was clearly a raptor with a huge claw on each foot. Nailed that one as Deinonychus with another quick search. Two more had me stymied. What's a connected educator to do?

"To the Twitterati!"
A quick photo and several tweets get the conversation going. Some really connected folks even RT me to get me more help. Discussions, searches for photos, and another hour go by. I'm satisfied that I have dinosaur names that are at least close to correct. One is Styracosaurus and the other Dilophosaurus. Whew!

My husband carefully points out that the boys will probably blow through them and not be as appreciative as we'd hope they would be. I know, and I try to adjust my expectations so that I'm not disappointed.

Hours of typing, poster making, direction writing, and resource gathering pass. I begin to realize that I've put way more time into this than I really have available, but it's too late. I can't let one little thing be out of place, can I?

I definitely went overboard. That's the price you pay for being a teacher.

I’m participating in a writing community at Two Writing Teachers. We write about a little "slice of our life" each Tuesday. In March - we attempt to write a slice EVERY day! Head over to their blog for the link up.

If you stop by and have written your own slice, please leave the link in the comments so I can easily find your post!