Kicking off the Term Topic – Dinosaurs
Children in Class One and Class Two at All Saints’ Church of England Primary School (Stockport, Cheshire), have started the second half of the spring term with a real roar! These two classes are studying dinosaurs, fossils and life in the past with the help of their enthusiastic teachers Mrs Noble and Mrs Manning. Although the term topic has only just started, the classrooms have lots of lovely dinosaur themed writing on display. In Mrs Manning’s Year 1 classroom, a dinosaur museum has been set up, perhaps some of the measuring activities we suggested after our workshop might feature amongst the children’s exhibits.
The Dinosaur Museum in the Classroom
Picture credit: All Saints’ Church of England Primary School/Everything Dinosaur
Children Study Dinosaurs
We noticed one of Everything Dinosaur’s inflatable dinosaurs on display in the dinosaur museum – it is an inflatable Stegosaurus! As Mrs Manning confessed that her favourite dinosaur was another type of armoured dinosaur, an Ankylosaurus (pronounced an-KEE-loh-sore-us), the workshop format was altered slightly to allow the children to explore the size and scale of prehistoric animals using Ankylosaurus. We were even able to compare our brains to the brain of this plant-eating, Late Cretaceous giant.
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Gaining Confidence with Adjectives
When asked to describe the size of the huge ammonite fossil, the children came out with lots of fantastic adjectives, the ammonite was described as “colossal”, “gigantic”, “massive” and we even had “enormous” – all super adjectives that impressed the Everything Dinosaur expert who was leading the workshop.
Over the course of the morning the classes learned lots of amazing dinosaur facts, with the teachers taking many photographs, all of which could be used in the recounting and recall activities scheduled for the afternoon.
Marine Reptiles As Well
With the dedicated support of the teaching assistants the children had been sorting dinosaurs into herbivores and carnivores. Reece had been colouring a drawing of a marine reptile, an Elasmosaurus (ee-las-mo-sore-us). He confidently told our dinosaur expert that Elasmosaurus was a plesiosaur.
A Drawing of a Marine Reptile (Elasmosaurus)
Picture credit: All Saints’ Church of England Primary School/Reece from Class One
Fossil Themed Workshop
For one of the extension resources, we challenged the children to have a go at designing their very own dinosaur. Perhaps, some of the dinosaurs that the children create might have long necks like Elasmosaurus, or even flippers, that would be a very intriguing dinosaur indeed! Could the children make a dinosaur model using modelling clay or perhaps building bricks? If the children create their very own dinosaur, we would like to see lots of lovely adjectives used to describe their design, in addition, could they come up with a name to describe their prehistoric animal?
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