Making Models of Fossils and Homework Club

Last week we did a fun little guided inquiry lab to learn about fossil imprints.

First, we used Play Doh and a plastic cube to make an imprint.

Then we wrote down how our imprint and the cube were alike and different. Size and shape were two of the ideas the kids had.

After that, the class had to secretly make an imprint of something else in the room. They shared their imprint and the rest of the class had to guess what the original object was.

The dice one was my favorite! It absolutely illustrated what we were trying to learn - that imprints and fossils look like the animal or plant that made them. And that observing and studying fossils teach us about what came before us!

We had a great time and it really drove home important information about fossils. :)

And in other news - a few people wanted to know more information about Homework Club. I actually got the idea from Molly at Lessons with Laughter. 

I made a little chart that I hung on the whiteboard in the front of the room with everyone's name on it. At the beginning of the day, I put a little sticker next to everyone's name who brought back their finished homework. After 5 days have passed, whoever has brought their finished homework back every day will get to eat in the room (instead of the cafegymatorium - haha), I'll show 20 minutes of a movie, and I'll give them a little treat. Once the initial "trial period" of 5 days is over, I'll probably extend it to a few weeks before we have a special lunch. I just wanted our first try to be doable for all the kids.

Like I said yesterday, two of my boys who have regularly missed recess for most of the year have brought their work back finished BOTH days so far, and that is a big deal to me! I wish I would have done this earlier, but now I will know for next year. :) I feel like I say that a lot!

New Glasses and Oviraptor Eggs!

Today my new glasses came in!

They are a lot different than my old ones so they will take some time to get used to but so far I like them!!

We are in the middle of our dinosaur unit and today we talked about how paleontologists continue to make new discoveries that change their thinking about dinos. The kids really thought this was cool - that even adult paleontologists learn new things and change their minds!

I read a few pages of this book to accompany what was in our science text. It's a great book!

We learned that scientists used to think that Oviraptors stole other dinosaurs' eggs, but they later determined that Oviraptors were actually just protecting their own eggs. My class called it "babysitting"... haha!

To integrate our Oviraptor info with math, we learned that Oviraptor eggs were about 20 centimeters long. Then we measured around the room and found objects that were longer than an egg, shorter than an egg, and about the same length as an egg.

This isn't my original idea (I borrowed it from the book), but I did make a little recording sheet that you can use if you're interested! Just click on the picture to have it. 

I also decided to start a "Homework Club" for kids who bring their homework back every day finished. At the end of 2 weeks, whoever has brought their homework back finished every day will be able to have lunch in our room and I will show 20 minutes of a movie or something. I have a few kids (4 or 5) who never do their homework so I keep them in from recess to do it unless they can get it done before we go outside. I hope this will encourage them to do it at home instead of playing Wii for 4 hours............ we'll see how it goes!

Head, Thorax, Abdomen!

Today we took a little detour from our normal course of action. My cousin, Kelley, is going to school to be a teacher and she came in and taught a lesson to my class!

She is in a crazy class called Insects and People, and for her final project she had to either write a ridiculous paper, rear an insect, or teach a lesson about insects. Clearly she picked the best option. :) So today my class learned about bees!

I definitely did not take pictures of everything... but she had the kids make a black and yellow foldable about bees.

One page was about the life cycle of a bee.

This isn't the finished page, but each bean stood for a stage of the life cycle. Underneath the beans, the kids glued a little piece of paper that said how many days the bee stays in that stage.

There were also pages about types of bees and body parts of bees! We also used a page from Reagan's Gone Buggy Unit!


Part of our super fun day was learning a song about an insect's body parts. I took a little video in case you've never sung this song before. My class LOVED it and sang it all day.

Later, we resumed our normal science unit and learned why fossils are important. We had a special conversation about extinction to make sure we knew that when something dies, it isn't necessarily extinct.

We put together these little fossil puzzles to help us understand that fossils give us clues about plants and animals because the fossils LOOK like the plant or animal that they came from!

I would give this to you... but it came from my science Teacher Activity Guide! I actually ordered this over the weekend because I don't have any of the supplemental stuff for my science program... only the kid books and my teacher's manual. And I had to ask my principal to buy the teacher's manual for me! But the guide was well worth the $4 I paid for it because they really liked this activity and it helped them understand different types of fossils and the type of work that paleontologists do.

And now that this linky party is over a week old, I think it's time to join up. :)

Mini-Paleontologists

Yesterday we started our fossils and dinosaurs unit! We filled out a little schema chart, which includes such things as:

• Dinosaurs are all dead.
• Birds are dinosaurs.
• Dinosaurs run fast.
• Dinosaurs eat people.
• Fossils are from old dinosaurs.
• Dinosaurs are all big.

And so on. We have a lot to learn!

Today we learned about how fossils form and how they can teach us about the past. We also briefly discussed what a paleontologist does. To make it real for them, the kids dug through chocolate chip cookies to get out the "fossils"!

First, they used a toothpick to VERY CAREFULLY remove the chips. We talked about how real paleontologists don't just dig with their hands; they use tools. Also that if they just chip away at the fossils, everything will get messed up and they won't be able to figure out what they dug up.

After the chips were removed, they used paintbrushes to brush the crumbs off. This totally did not do anything but they were bound and determined to brush off all the crumbs. Haha!

At recess, my class found a "fossil" that they had to show me.

I'm guessing it is just a little concrete bump but who knows? Maybe it is a worm fossil. Haha!

I'm planning on doing a few more dig things as we move forward. Tomorrow we are going to make fossil prints in playdough to show how we can learn things from fossils.

Lastly, I voted today!

Illinois people, get out there and vote!!!