Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs!

     It is all about Dinosaurs this month in my second grade classroom.  Rawrrrrrrrrrrr!  Our unit began right after we returned from Spring Break.  I introduced the unit with a very sorry looking "egg" made out of a brown paper bag (I just can't bring myself to paper mache anymore).  Inside was a triceratops puppet.  We had done some inferring previously during our read alouds, but I think we need to keep working on that strategy (as you can see from some of their answers after each clue). 

The idea for this chart was inspired by one Deanna Jump posted on her blog.

     After discovering our unit of study we dove into it by reading Professor Potts' book, Uneversaurus.  This is an excellent book that explains how we know what dinosaurs looked like even though no human has ever seen one.  After reading the book we used our imaginations, bubble wrap, white butcher paper, sponge rollers and yellow, magenta, turquoise and black Crayola tempera paint to mix colors and create our own dinosaur skin.  The kids loved this!  We then traced one of three dinosaur patterns onto our skin to create our own version of a dinosaur.

     This week we are also learning about fossils and did a mini dinosaur dig in the classroom.  Again, my students LOVED this!  A couple of years ago I found a great replica of a T-Rex skeleton at Costco of all places.  I layered the "fossils" in a clear tote with potting soil and let these budding scientists have at it.  My class is small this year (15 cutie pies) and two were absent today so I broke them into 3 groups.  We had "diggers," "recorders," and "washers."  Each group rotated through each job.  In order to give everyone a chance to discover a fossil I had to stay on top of the rotation of the first two groups.  By the third group they were on their own.  I love standing back and watching kids discover and learn without me in the way.  The "washsers" started trying to figure out how to assemble the pieces.  They kept encouraging the "diggers" to keep digging for fossils they thought they still needed.  Then there was a whole conversation between the "recorders" about how archeologists don't always find all the bones they need to assemble the skeleton.

     It was pretty exciting...to say the least.  Stay tuned for more of our dino discoveries.