We focus this week on dinosaurs--how they lived, what they ate, and how big (or how little) they were. We learn that Paleontologists are the scientists who study the subject of dinosaurs and we learn a little about how the scientists do this by heading to the playground for our own "bone dig." (We used bleached turkey and chicken leg bones.)The children will learn first-hand how to cast a bone in the field before shipping it back to the museum. Scientists did this because the centuries-old bone fossils could break or crumble in route, but the cast would duplicate the details of the fossil so the scientists could study it without danger of harming the original bone. The children's "fossil" casts should be ready to bring home next week. We also discuss how paleontologists love a good puzzle and love to piece the fossils together to discover the animal's characteristics. We encourage the children to play with puzzles to discover this skill.
For snack we will have a dinosaur-snack excavation--digging them out of our brownies!
Books We Read: Dinosaurs (Gail Gibbons); Dinosaurs Inside and Out (Sandra Markle)
Next Week: Conferences next week so no Science Fun classes on Tuesday or Thursday. On Friday we will talk about spiders and how they hunt. We will conclude our dinosaur unit the following week for all three Science Fun classes.
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