Traces of Life Activities and Fireworks
Dinosaurs!
September 22-27
Workshop Activities
1. Craft – Make trace fossils
2. Key Points – Fossil Hunt
3. Collaborative – Match dinosaur skeletons to their dinosaurs
4. Language Arts – Identify the word roots in dinosaurs
5. Math/Logic – Assemble one million dots
6. Character Connection – Debate about dinosaur extinction theories
7. Big Activity – Excavate Fossils
8. Movement - Fetch! - running game
Minecraft Activities
layers of the earth's crust and what is found there
one million pixels
dinosaur dig
build challenge: dinosaur skeleton
Upcoming Events
Thursday Park Days at Santa Ana Zoo: https://www.facebook.com/events/479026312918466/
Disneyland meetup: October 8 – Ancient Ologies https://www.facebook.com/events/438347327015581/
October 21: Field Trip at Aquarium of the Pacific, Celebration, and overnighter at the aquarium – watch for details!
Fireworks
Read through the fireworks and choose about five that you think might interest your child. Allow him or her to select 1-3 of them.
Collect one million of an item of your choice.
Gather 100 items into a container. Can you figure out how many of that container would be necessary to have one million of the item? How much space would that require?
Make dinosaur hunter trading cards with pictures of paleontologists or of the dinosaurs they discovered. The cards should contain the basic facts as well as something really interesting or unusual about the paleontologist or dinosaur featured on the card.
Assemble a dinosaur skeleton kit from a craft store.
Examine the various theories about what happened to the dinosaurs. What do you think really happened? Write a short book that explains your theory as if it is true. Provide evidence to support your claim.
Figure out how many years there have been between dinosaurs and humans.
Create a paper tyrannosaurus rex model: http://www.papertoys.com/t-rex.htm
Make a dinosaur terrarium: http://lifestyle.howstuffworks.com/crafts/animal-crafts/dinosaur-crafts3.htm
Do some dinosaur crafts: http://www.rain.org/~philfear/download-a-dinosaur.html
Learn more about paleontology: http://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/paleontology
Discover the dinosaurs at the Smithsonian: http://paleobiology.si.edu/dinosaurs/
Go fossil hunting.
Be a dinosaur for a day. A will you be a herbivore or carnivore? Where do you sleep? What do you do all day? Write about your experiences.
Read some books about dinosaurs.
Play some math games.
Play some dinosaur games:
https://www.dinofun.com/
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/dinosaurs/dinotimes/index.htm
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/dinosaurs/realormakebelieve/index.htm
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/dinosaurs/dinoquiz/index.htm
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/dinosaurs/buildadino/index.htm
Make a life-size or half-size mural of a T-Rex skeleton.
Complete a dinosaur puzzle.
Use cardboard to make a 3-D dinosaur.
Experience the tedious work of excavation. Use toothpicks to dig chocolate chips out of cookies.
Using the Greek word roots, create an all new dinosaur with the features you choose.
Use Q-tips as dinosaur bones. Glue them on card stock to create a dinosaur skeleton.
Discover then teach about the differences between dinosaurs, marine reptiles, and pterosaurs.
Using a long row of paper, show the size comparisons of about five different dinosaurs.
Make a diorama of dinosaurs.
Field Trip Ideas
Visit a museum with dinosaur displays, including:
the Jurupa Mountains Cultural Center in Riverside: http://jmdc.org/
Clark Park in Buena Park: http://ocparks.com/parks/ralph/interpretive
Discovery Cube in Santa Ana: https://oc.discoverycube.org/exhibits/dinoquest/
Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont: https://www.alfmuseum.org/
Western Science Center in Hemet: https://www.westernsciencecenter.org/