Kindergarteners or Paleontologists?

This semester I am placed in a kindergarten classroom for my science field experience. I have been teaching them about dinosaurs and they LOVE it! It's amazing how motivated they are when something interests them. As I was planning my lessons I was struggling to come up with something hands-on for them to do with dinosaurs because I don't have dinosaur bones to show them! After some brainstorming with my cooperating teacher, we came up with a plan to engage them.

To begin we had a surprise "visitor" in our classroom. I took the kids to a bathroom break and when we came back there were items strewn all over the carpet.

The items included:

• Diaper
• Onesie
• Pacifier
• Tiny sock
• Tiny shoe

We had to look at the clues our "visitor" left because no one saw the visitor in our classroom. We made a list of what the clues told us:

• It was a baby.
• It could've been their ESL teacher because she just had a baby. (wasn't expecting them to make this connection!)
• It was a boy because the clothes were blue.
• It was a small baby.

Once we had a good idea of who our visitor could've been, I made the connection back to dinosaurs. No human has ever seen a dinosaur, so scientists who study dinosaurs have to look at their bones like clues or pieces of a puzzle! I introduced the word paleontologist and we watched a video about what paleontologists do. The video was perfect because it illustrated for them what a paleontologist does much more than just me talking about it.

The most exciting part of our activity came next. The students were able to make their own fossils! They put a small animal into play-doh to make an imprint. Then they moved around the classroom and tried to guess what the animal was by looking at only the imprint. We were paleontologists!

The kids were so engaged throughout the whole lesson! I am excited with how well it went.