OurWanderingAdventures : Fossil Friday!

Friday, February 20, 2015

Fossil Friday!

It's Fossil Friday in the school room and I wanted to share with you what we all did for our fossil lesson with our homeschool group. The kids got to dig for dinosaur bones from a plaster of paris brick with pick tools and a hammer.

These are real fossil specimens given to us by the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Educators have an awesome opportunity to borrow learning boxes from the museum for a small fee and they are an awesome way to get our group together learn.

Due to booking issues with our local library, I decided to host this event in our home. Knwing we had a fairly large group coming, I decided to create stations, so that the kids were not restricted to their tables and the activities could be spread about. I also raided our classroom library for as many books on Fossils, minerals and rocks we could find and used those to decorate the space.

I had 3 tables set up with a booklet we would all be making and I spread the fossils throughout the tables, to encourage them to move from table to table. Each table had a variety of craft supplies, so they would only have to share with their table and not the entire room.

Using the awesome TOOBs from Safari Ltd., I made up these awesome checklists that you can get HERE (Print and laminate them to use over and over again)and then I dumped the TOOBS in bins and covered them in rice. This alone makes a fantastic sensory bin, but when paired with a magnifying glass, brush and checklist, it becomes a hunt to learn. They were told to dig for one, match it to the list and read the name and then check it off.

Using a Google search, I came across this Types of Rock sheet, but it was afrom a pay site for the entire activity and as I was doing this on my own dime with a small fee to pay for the box from the group, I decided to keep hunting. I used the cover sheet and shrunk it down to fit 4 per page, so that I would not waste that much ink and paper and then did the same for the definitions. Add them to paper for a longer backgroun and they were fun and easy to make! It was a great event after everything!