Saturday, November 10, 2012

Digging Up the Past

I am trying to incorporate more hands-on activities this year; more building, more constructing, more tinkering.

To demonstrate how paleontologists retrieve bones from the ground, I put some plastic dinosaur bones in some plastic trays and buried them in dirt.

I had the trays out for a while before we did this, so the students all knew what was in them after digging in them themselves, but the purpose of this activity was not to find what was inside, but rather to be scientists and to use the clues we find to paint a picture.

I was also able to show them how to make a grid, as shown below, so they could record exactly (or as accurately as first and second graders can) what they saw.


1
2
3
A



B



C





I have more bones buried in the garden which I want to use as an activity to build on this one. That is, if the weather ever clears up.

No comments:

Post a Comment