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Category: History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori)

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History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Homeschool Den / Science / Science: Earth Science Unit / Science: Rocks and Minerals

Earth Science: Earth’s Geologic Timeline

We spent about a week learning about Earth’s four eons and most recent eras.  Today I wanted to share several of the activities we did to go along with this part of our unit. As you may recall, we reviewed the planets in the Solar System, talked about the age of the Earth (4.6 Billion years)  and did an impressionistic activity to show how short human history actually is compared to...

Feathered Dinosaurs 2

History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Homeschool Den / Must Read / Outdoor: Fossils / Science / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

Feathered Dinosaurs

This might be of interest to the dinosaur-loving tots (and parents!) out there. This news from last month passed me by until a couple of days ago. Did you hear that a new species of feathered dinosaur was discovered in Bavaria, in Southern Germany? The fossil of a Sciurumimus albersdoerferi, a carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 150 million years ago in the late Jurassic period shows the first evidence of feathered theropod dinosaurs that are...

Montessori Philosophy and our USA unit study 6

History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / History: This is the United States-Unit Study (grade 1) / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation

Montessori Philosophy and our USA unit study

I’ve been doing some reading and re-reading of Montessori philosophy this summer.  I thought I’d share my thoughts about how our studies — specifically our USA unit study — fits in with my interpretations of Montessori teaching in the early elementary grades.  As I have three kids spanning the two age groupings (both 3-6 and 6-9), I use elements from both. **We will be starting the year by creating paper...

Dinosaur trashosaurus 12

History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

Huge Dinosaur Activity! Trash-o-saurus Measures in at 9 feet 9 inches by 4 feet 8 inches

We had so much fun with our huge dinosaur project.  A teacher on a website I saw somewhere (sorry, I forget where) mentioned having her class make a “trash-o-saurus.”  I thought that was a brilliant idea, especially as we have SO much packing paper from our move. We looked around the yard for some items to help us make the structure (bone system) of our dinosaur.  The previous owners left...

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History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

Dinosaur Body Structure Activity — Marshmallows, Straws and Skewers

We came across a wonderful idea here at U.C. Berkley: The Dinosaur Body to learn more about body structure and how dinosaurs had to be perfectly balanced to stand and move.  I read the paragraphs about the importance of balance and had the kids balance a ruler on their fingers and then add a light head and a heavy head (the heavy head made the ruler tip over and you...

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History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

Measuring Dinosaurs Activity

We looked up the length of several well-known dinosaurs, grabbed our plastic models and then went outside to see how long they really were. We chose stegosaurus 30 feet T-Rex 40 feet apatosaurus 90 feet We looked at how long one foot was (we hadn’t done measuring in feet before as we’ve used the metric system up until now) — and then measured out the dinosaurs’ lengths using a 20...

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History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

Dinosaur Fossils Impression Activity

At the beginning of our activity we looked at this real fern fossil (from Pennsylvania). We talked about how ferns have been around for millions of years and fossil records indicate they were around well before dinosaurs (we referred back to the chart we have on “what came first” from a previous day.)  Then we went into our woods and looked for different kinds of ferns for making our own...

Geologic Time Line Activity 6

History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

Geologic Time Line Activity

The Montessori teaching albums have an exercise called the “Clock of Eras.” I felt that would not work as well for our family as DD really doesn’t “get” the idea of a clock fully.  I didn’t think it would really teach them the enormity of time as well as a long set of ribbons would… so instead I used the proportions of the clock and made a very long geologic...

The Purple Strip 0

History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

The Purple Strip

For those of you who know much about Montessori, you’ll recognize “The Black Strip.” This is an impressionistic activity that is meant to impress kids with the enormity of time on earth.  Our version was the purple ribbon strip — and it is only 21 feet (as my ribbon ream was 7 yards!).  But it still shows how very little time we humans have been on earth.  I’m showing you...

Timelines 3

History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

Timelines

Montessori uses five “Great Lessons” as an introduction to all topics.  It provides children with a big picture to demonstrate how sciences, art, history, language and geography are interrelated.  This idea resonates well with our learning style.  We did our own version of the first Great Lesson last year and LD still talks about it (and the science experiments and activities that followed). This year we’re off to explore the...

Want to make a “TRASH-O-SAURUS”??!! 2

History: Geologic Timeline (Montessori) / Science: Dinosaurs Unit

Want to make a “TRASH-O-SAURUS”??!!

I lost my internet connection this week.  That’s a total bummer since writing on the blog is a major outlet for me since we’re so new to the area (and I know very few people yet). The kids and I had busy, fun week and I hope to start sharing some of our activities later this weekend. We’ve been working on our timeline unit (I’ll explain more soon, though a...