Dinosaurs, Assignment 2 and 3

So this isn't exactly unique to dinosaurs but the boys' second project consisted of making a time line of life- basically I just wanted them familiar with the names of the periods and some of the things that might have happened in those periods. I know I learned it in school and I remember a handful of names and somewhat of their order. Although I probably do know the whole thing a little better after helping Rylan and Cale with their charts. The information was much more relatable since the day before we watched Before the Dinosaurs: Walking with Monster's Reptile's Beginnings which took them from the Permian into the Jurassic. So as they were putting together their charts they brought up things that happened in the movie which fell into the certain periods. We also talked a little bit about other schools of thought on this topic, and how not all people believe the same thing on this particular topic.

Here's Cale's, 1st grade, less writing version

And Rylan's, 3rd grade, more writing version


Yesterday we started with geography. They each made a salt dough versions of the continents based on these Pangaea cut-outs. They had Greenland, India, N. America, S. America, Australia, Antarctica and Eurasia. Lakin made his own version....he called them bridges.

We baked them for a couple hours, then painted them.

Today we cut them out and glued them down..

Lakin's Pangaea
(not really, but all his 'bridges' were glued in one big blob...)

Cale's Triassic

Rylan's Jurassic

Cohen's Cretaceous

We also compared them to our present day map and followed how they moved through out time. They remembered the show we watched once on the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean which talked a little about the current movement of Australia. And how we heard on the news a couple weeks back that the recent Earthquake in Chile shifted the Earth on it's axis, shortened the day and raised an island up about 6 ft. Putting all that information together helped them see that the movement of the continents wasn't unique to the past, but is still happening today.