Dinosaur Museum

Hiking the trails. Rawr!!

Yesturday as a part of our Earth Scouts, we went to our local Dinosaur Museum...it was awesome (and it only cost a grand total of $7 for all 3 of us!!!!!!) We watched a really bad movie on the t-rex. Well it wasn't bad, it was just much more geared to adults than children - analyzing the debate between paleontoligist on wether t-rex was really a predetor or a scavenger....boring!

But the kids had a fabulous time. The museum itself isn't much more than a dome. See about 2 decades ago a plot of land was being cleared for a building. But the contractors came upon a fabulous find. Almost the entire plot of land was covered in dino footprints!!! They were everywhere. So the state purchased the land from the private company and built a dome over the find. They've added some info on local geology, and they added some life size dino replicas but that's pretty much it. There are extensive nature trails which have been set up in the Messozoic perion with plantlife, and picnic areas.

I think the kids' favorite part was the mining for fossils. You purchase a bag of' soil in the gift shop, and outside the set up a waist high 'stream'. You use net boxes to dump in the soil and water runs through cleaning out the soil and leaving behing about a ziper bag full of stones and a single fossil (like a little tooth or shell or something). The kids absolutely LOVED it.

Xman's hand inside one of the footprints. DJ's hand inside the hand print

Analyzing Fossils!

Dinosaurs Combo Book

For now through the first 1/2 of the summer we're learning all about the ocean (see earlier posts) but the second 1/2 of the summer is dedicated to Dinosaurs...so here's some of what we'll be usin (in another Combo book).

So, I'm thinking the chapters of our combo book will be as follows:

• Dinosaurs - general info like definitions of a dinosaur, timeline, life in those time periods -how it differed, world geography of the time (placement of the continents) dino families (how they're catagorized) etc
• Paleantology - a few notable scientists, what is paleantology, tools of the trade, most popular places, etc.
• Earliest Animals - these would really be the precursurs to dino's in the Precambrian and Paleozoic periods.
• Dino's of the Triassic*
• Dino's of the Jurassic*
• Dino's of the Crestaceous*
• Evolution (descendants of the dinosaurs)
  *The Dino's sections will be broken into Producers (plant life), Primary Consumers (eat consumers - aka herbivors), Secondary Consumers (eat primary consumers - aka omnivors) and Tertiary Consumers (eat secondary consumers - aka carnivors)

Printables:

• kaboose printables
• Dltk-Kids crafts & printables
• Enchanted Learning Dio-Templates
• Learning Page
• AtoZ teacher Stuff
• Sr. Richard Owens
• Teacher Vision
• We need to also study Roy Chapmen Andrews
• Paleantologists
• Further Enchanted Learning
• Fossils
• CurriClick
• About Homeschooling
• Print activities
• ABC Teach
• Kids Domain
• Free Stuff 4 Kids
• Crafts
• Activities
• Kid Sparkz
• Kids Soup
• clip art