The youngest group of students have been investigating DINOSAURS! We took a long time to read Dinosaur Valley and Maia: A Dinosaur Grows Up. Dinosaur Valley follows a family of Orodromeus dinosaurs. Maia is a story of a Maiasaura, a duck-billed dinosaur, as she grows up, travels, and becomes a mother herself. In both stories we had A LOT of discussion about herbivores, carnivores, defense mechanisms, frills and horns, the environments different dinosaurs lived in, how different species built nests, how long 80 million years ago actually was and measured how many of our bodies laying down is the same length as a one year Maiasaura (15 feet). Spoiler alert…it’s 4!

As a class, we began investigating the different sizes and shapes of dinosaurs. We made two actual sized Triceratops feet. We then estimated that we could fit 16 of our feet into one triceratops foot. To test our theory, we traced and cut out our own feet on colorful paper and pasted them onto the Triceratops feet. We fit 35 of our feet into one triceratops foot! We also researched the length of a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth and practiced using rulers (with inches and centimeters) to make our own 6 inch long T-Rex teeth.

In small groups, the students have been playing a Dinosaur Game where they travel through the three periods in which dinosaurs lived. They learn that not all dinosaurs lived at the same time. During each period, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous, they choose a dinosaur that lived during that period and are able to compare it’s height, length and if they were herbivores or carnivores, to other dinosaurs that lived during the same period.

 

We will be continuing with the Dinosaur unit.