Digging is fun

About a month ago, I happened upon a team of spontaneous diggers on the playground. The next day, a first grader wrote in his journal, "I like to dig on the playground to dig for rocks. My hole is deep but no rocks yet. I will try to find some one day. But it is fun if I find one or not. Digging is fun."

So I knew this would be a hit, but it was better than I ever dreamed! Huge thanks to Dr. Bakker, David Temple, Chris Flis, and the outstanding HMNS volunteers for sharing their passion and expertise and for giving me the inspiration to try this.

To set the stage, we watched some short videos of prospecting and digging in the field. (Be sure to visit http://12days.hmns.org/ and click on the dino skeleton.) Our Cooperative Science Groups were then transformed into dig teams of vertebrate paleontologists, scanning the ground for clues to the past. Fortunately for our young scientists, yesterday's erosion (geology on fast forward) had exposed some interesting "fossil" finds.

"Wow! I think this might be a jaw!" "This one looks like a really long bone that goes from here to here," one child told me, pointing to show me two spots where bone peeked from the ground. This could indicate more hiding beneath the surface!

Each site was given a name, chosen by the diggers of course. My favorite was MDFR28 (Many Diggers for Room 28)--inspired, I think, by a real site named K2 (for Kathy Zoehfeld, one of our favorite science authors as well as paleontology dig team volunteer). Flufftania (named for Fluffy, our traveling hare) was a close second.

Armed with mini-shovels, the children began to carefully excavate the land surrounding their "fossil" finds.

As they got close to bone, they switched to other paleontology tools of choice, including a pointy pick, a brush, and a straw.

While not every aspect of our dig model was accurate, the thrill of discovery was real. "Oooo, there are teeth here! It's another part of the jaw!" "Oh! There's bone over here, too!" "Do we get to take these home?" It sounded just like a real dig pit! As they worked, diggers used their knowledge of the human skeleton to identify the bones they uncovered. One group proudly explained to a classroom visitor, "We think these are phalanges--you know, those tiny finger bones--or maybe toe bones. We found twenty little bones!"

Before removing anything from the ground, our paleontologists carefully traced each bone on clear plastic to map its location in relation to the others.

The length of each bone was recorded in our paleontologists' field notebooks.

They used a compass to measure and record the direction of each bone.

Our young scientists were then ready to carefully remove the bones and place them in labeled, numbered ziplock bags.

Finally, our paleontologists sifted through the dirt, determined not to miss any tiny clues to the past.

Phalanges found!

Another classroom visitor sidled up to me and quietly said, "You need to take these children on a real fossil dig." Yep, I'm on it!

Many teachers are compulsive collectors. "Don't throw that away! I might be able to use it for something!" (I know I'm not the only one because I've seen more than one teacher car, teacher closet, and in one case, an entire shed.) I have been collecting a few things, knowing that someday they would find their classroom calling and, like scientific Cinderellas, transform themselves into something great. Today was that day! Opossum bones (which I confess I collected from roadkill on the sidewalk---disinfected for days in hydrogen peroxide, I promise!!!) became hidden "fossil" bones. Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers debris became geology screens for sifting dig site sand. Gelato scoops were the perfect scale for tiny shovels. Laminate leftovers were just right for site maps. Straws poached from restaurants and movie theaters are already authentic paleo-tools (no transformation required). Savers vindicated!

What We're Reading:
If You Are a Fossil Hunter by Byrd Baylor
Bone Poems by Jeff Moss

Sand and cinnamon

$3.22 buys 50 pounds of sand and loads of messy fun!

Each cooperative science team began with a box of sand sprinkled with a layer of cinnamon (modeling a patch of mountainous earth). The team then modeled geological processes of wind and water erosion.

Winds scoured the land.

Next, it began to rain--lightly and then a downpour.

Finally, a river formed and cut its way through the mountain.

Over time, erosion changed the surface of our patches of earth (and our classroom smelled fabulous!). Erosion also revealed some exciting surprises, hidden under the surface of the soil! (Tomorrow, young paleontologists will investigate.) The Sun, the Wind, and the Rain by Lisa Westberg Peters was a great conclusion to our lesson.

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?"

The sound of silence

I wish you could hear the peace that settles over the table of 25 of us, when we finally begin eating. It is a sound to treasure. This multi-cultural feast is a class tradition.

Third graders (and a few hard-working younger children) help set the table with tablecloths, plates, napkins, utensils, and vases of flowers. Every year before we sit down to eat, we read "Foreign Food," the story of Boubacar, a second-grade boy from Mali, West Africa, who shares a favorite cultural food with at-first doubtful friends. We discuss why I might have chosen to read this story on the day of our feast, and then each child tells about the food s/he brought and why it is special to his/her family.

We sit together at our long dining table (constructed from desks) and patiently pass dishes from left to right--newly adventurous eaters taking small servings of unfamiliar foods. When all of the savories have made their way around our long table and I have ladled 25 cups of hot cider--an unfamiliar treat for my southern city students, the hosts (my assistant and I) announce it is finally time to begin eating. That's when the unimposed silence sets in. Ahhh . . . a quiet peace that I wish I could put in a box and save for later. Happy Thanksgiving!

Everybody Needs a Rock

That's the title of a favorite book by Byrd Baylor, and I believe it's true. Everybody needs a rock . . . . some of us need two or ten or two hundred!

Of course, what lesson is complete without a fieldtrip with Ms. Frizzle and her class? We read The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth as we reviewed the layers of the earth and studied sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks.

Cooperative science teams then acted as mineral detectives, working together to identify a mystery mineral, using a series of mineral tests.

They observed the mineral's color, smell, and luster.

A flashlight helped to determine whether the mineral was transparent, translucent, or opaque.

Next, the mineral was carefully dragged along a white tile and then a black tile to find the color of the streak.

Young geologists tested the mineral's hardness first by attempting to scratch it with a fingernail, then a nail, a penny, and a tile.

The mineral was checked for properties of magnetism and fluorescence.

The mineral's mass and volume were measured and recorded.

Finally, our mineral detectives had gathered enough information to guess at the mystery mineral's identity!

Dave's Down to Earth Rock Shop is a great literature tie-in for classification of rocks and minerals.

Thanks to generous DonorsChoose donors for the funding to purchase our mineral test kits, as well as Fossils and Rocks, Gems, & Minerals field guides!

Do not eat the science

I'm thinking it's a bad sign when you find yourself having employed both oven and stove without producing anything edible . . . or having just visited the grocery store but still without any actual food.

We have been having big fun with geology in room 28!

We began with the layers of the earth--in the form of earth cross-section necklaces, which the children created with Sculpy, starting with the inner core and layering on a blanket of outer core, mantle, crust, and then spots of ocean. How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World is great to pair with this lesson.

The children then worked together to create repeated volcanic eruptions, a mountain taking shape as each new lava flow layered upon the last. "Cooperative investigation teams" then traded their newly formed mountains to take core samples (a good excuse for movie theater clear-straw thefts!) to study the stratigraphy of the volcano and draw conclusions about the volcano's pattern of eruptions.

Bright orange magma in the form of frosting and tectonic plates in the form of graham crackers found their way into our classroom for a study of faults and plate tectonics. Children worked in their "Cooperative investigation teams" to model earthquake-causing transverse faults,

mountain-building convergent faults,

and normal faults.

How Mountains Are Made by Kathleen Zoehfeld was the perfect conclusion to these lessons on our changing earth!

It's not easy being green

. . . or red or orange or yellow or blue or indigo or violet.

Every year around this time, the children begin to ask how I'm feeling. They are anticipating my sore throat and the need for a substitute teacher. Fortunately, our favorite substitute was once again available for duty. Ms. Frizzle has an unusual sense of fashion, and you never know what will happen when she visits your classroom. She is always fabulously accessorized, and this year, her outfit featured paintbrush and paint palette earrings, with tiny metal paint buckets on her shoes.

Frizzle lesson of the day: No matter how perfectly they accessorize your outfit, it is a bad idea to attach tiny metal buckets filled with wet paint to your shoes. Paint will drip from the tiny buckets onto your carpet on your way out the door to work and make a not-so-tiny bright blue schmear as you attempt to clean it up.

Happy Halloween!