Scorpions & spiders & snakes! Oh, my!

You should have seen the look on the face of one of our third grade boys when I revealed that Fluffy and I had spent part of the summer digging up Dimetrodon! It was as if previously he had been only mildly aware of my existence, but now I had suddenly popped into focus, live and in full color! "Wow! Did you find one of the spines?"

I almost backed out. I asked myself, "What could I have been thinking when I signed up to spend six days outside in 105 degree shadeless heat with cacti whose spines threaten to get stuck in my butt, not to mention the scorpions, tarantulas, and rattlesnakes? Why did I think that was a good idea?"

I had signed up for the Houston Museum of Natural Science Paleontology Field School for Educators back in March . . . when the weather was cool and the oven-like heat of summer didn't cross my mind. I had only thought longingly of all the fossils I could bring back to the classroom. When June arrived and I packed my "Amazon hat" and a long sleeve shirt to protect from full days in the sun, I reassured myself that it was only six days. "I can survive heat and sweat for six days," I told myself.

The truth is . . . I loved it! AND I willingly agreed to stay an extra four days. There's something very peaceful and meditative about surrendering to the slow thinking that accompanies that kind of heat and just sitting and digging. There's also the excitement of discovery. Usually it's the guy next to you . . . or the guy who just moved into the very spot where you dug fruitlessly all day yesterday, but sometimes you find something really cool all on your own. (Read more about the team's work in Seymour and hear about what they found on their most recent visit.)

It wasn't until I began to share with the children the slide show I developed that I realized just how much I'd really learned. To place Dimetrodon in context (NOT a dinosaur), we began with a review of the Clock of Eras and the Timeline of Life. (Dimetrodon was the first land predator, walking the Earth in the Permian period, at the end of the Paleozoic Era--way before dinosaurs.) I thought we'd breeze through the whole slide show in one lesson, and I had a few other things up my sleeve to fill the rest of the afternoon. Boy was I wrong! We managed to get through only 15 of the 53 slides. The children were fascinated and full of questions! Some of them I could answer, but for many of them my response was, "Wow! That's a great question. Let's write that down in the Great Questions book, and we'll ask a paleontologist."

The Great Questions book has been a brilliant addition to our learning this year. We now record all those wonderful questions to which I respond, "Wow! I don't know, but that's a great question. Why don't you do some research and find out." Instead of forgetting about those wonderful questions and moving on with our curious lives, we revisit them in our weekly Class Meeting and choose someone to investigate each question.

What We're Reading:
"Dimetrodon's Sail" from Bone Poems by Jeff Moss

Great Questions:

"How do paleontologists know how old fossils are?"

"Did Dimetrodons ever eat other Dimetrodons?"

"Did Dimetrodons live into the Mesozoic Era? What caused them to go extinct?"

"What is the evidence (sp: evidints) that Diadectes was an amphibian? Did its young begin life in the water? Is there fossil proof of that?"

"How do paleontologists tell the difference between Dimetrodon bones and Edaphosaurus bones?"

"Are they guessing Leonardo's a boy?"

"Can hair be fossilized?"