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Museum
Educator-led Programs
Pre & Post Visit Resources
Voyage to the Ancient Seas
PreK - K
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Program
Description and Frameworks
Program
Outline
Key
Terms and Concepts
Classroom Activities
Print and Web Resources
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here for printable version of all resources listed above
Program
Description and Frameworks
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Dive into the exciting realm of the ancient seas! Students learn about ancient sea life through stories, games, pictures, and hands-on activities. Handle fossils and try your own hand at excavating in our dino dig.
Location:
Last Gallery of Savage Ancient Seas and Dinosaur Gallery
Length: 45 minutes
Grades: PreK - K
PLEASE NOTE: Groups should schedule a separate time for self-guiding exploration of the Savage Ancient Seas exhibit. This program will enhance and deepen student understanding of material presented in the exhibit, but it does not take students into most of the exhibit.
MA Frameworks Science and Technology/Engineering
Science and Technology/ Engineering Strand 1; Standard 1
| 1 |
Recognize that water, rocks, soil, and living organisms are found on the
Earth's surface.
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Science and Technology/ Engineering Strand 2; Standards 2, 5
| 2 |
Differentiate between living and nonliving things. Group both living and
nonliving things according to the characteristics that they share.
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| 5 |
Recognize that fossils provide us with information about living things that
inhabited the earth years ago.
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New
York Standards
Math, Science and Technology Standard 1 Scientific Inquiry 1
| 1 |
Students:
• ask 'why' questions in attempts to seek greater understanding concerning objects and events they have observed and hear about.
• question the explanations they hear from others and read about, seeking clarification and comparing them with their own observations and understandings.
• develop relationships among observations to construct descriptions of objects and events and to form their own tentative explanations of what they have observed.
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Standard 4 Science the Living Environment 1, 3, 6
| 1 |
Students:
• describe the characteristics of and variations between living and
nonliving things.
• students describe the life processes common to all living things.
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| 3 |
Students describe how the structures of plants and animals complement the environment of the plant or animal.
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| 6 |
Students describe how plants and animals, including humans, depend
upon each other and the nonliving environment.
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Standard 4 Physical Setting 2
| 2 |
Many of the phenomena that we observe on Earth involve interactions among components of air, water, and land.
Students describe the relationships among air, water, and land on Earth, which is evident, for example, when students assemble rock and mineral collections based on characteristics such as erosional features or crystal size features.
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Program
Outline
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Introduction
An introduction answering basic questions like: When were the dinosaurs alive? How do we know about them? Were there other kinds of creatures alive then? How do fossils form?
Meet the Creatures
An introduction to various prehistoric creatures like turtles, pterosaurs, sharks and other fish, and swimming reptiles, in addition to specific dinosaurs.
Students will also get to compare their own body size to the body parts of these creatures.
Fossil Match-Up
Students are challenged to match up a fossil with the image of the plant or animal that it came from. Once we have the fossils matched with images, the whole class will get to see and touch all of the fossils.
Fossil Comparison
Students use their senses of sight, hearing, touch,
and smell to compare fossils to their living counterparts: wood & fossilized wood; a live plant and fossilized plant; sea urchin and urchin fossil; and fossilized turtle shell pieces with the shell of a live turtle.
Interactive Story
Students act out sounds and motions while a Museum Educator tells the story of a journey back in time to the Cretaceous!
Dig!
Put on your goggles and try your hand at digging in
our simulated dino excavation site!
Concepts
Covered
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• Dinosaurs are no longer alive today, but were alive long ago.
• Scientists learn about dinosaurs by studying fossils.
• Fossils are formed over a long period of time.
• Fossils are the remains or traces of things that once were alive. Teeth, claws, bones, leaves, and footprints can all become fossilized.
• Dinosaurs are related to lizards, crocodiles, turtles, and snakes. Like their reptilian relatives, dinosaurs had dry, scaly skin and laid eggs.
• Some dinosaurs ate meat and some ate plants.
• Different prehistoric animals had different specialized body parts that helped them to survive, like Stegosaurus' plates and Triceratops' horns.
• Many dinosaurs were very large compared to us.
• Animals like fish, turtles, flying reptiles, and swimming reptiles were alive during the Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs were alive.
Key
Terms Used During the Program
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- Cretaceous Period
the time period from 144 to 65 million years ago. The
last time period when dinosaurs were alive.
- Dinosaurs
a group of prehistoric reptiles that are extinct (are no longer living). They did not live in water or fly, and they walked with legs and arms under their bodies. Unlike lizards and crocodiles, their knees and elbows did not stick out to the sides.
- Fossil
remains or traces of something that was once alive and is preserved by minerals (the building blocks of rocks).
- Marine
living in an ocean.
- Reptile
a group of air-breathing animals that rely on sources outside of their bodies, such as the sun, for heating and cooling their bodies, most of whom lay eggs and have skin covered with scales or bony plates.
- Paleontologist
a scientist who studies prehistoric life through the examination of fossilized remains.
- Prehistoric
before history was recorded by people through writing.
Pre
& Post Visit Activities
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PreKinders: Karen Cox's Class Website for St. Teresa's School: Dinosaur Unit
This website has a plethora of suggestions for ways to integrate the topic of dinosaurs throughout the PreK curriculum.
Assessment: Create a Dinosaur Word Chart
Before your visit to the Museum, ask the whole class to brainstorm what comes to mind when they think about dinosaurs. Write down and draw key words and ideas. Also encourage students to think about what questions they might like to ask while they are at the Museum. Repeat the exercise after your visit to see what has changed.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Excavation
Give each student a chocolate chip cookie, and encourage them to use skewers, toothpicks, popsicle sticks, or plastic spoons to "excavate" the chips from their cookie before eating it.
Dino Puppets
Students can make their own dinosaur puppets out of paper bags. Put one arm inside the bag and use your hand to open and close your dinosaur's mouth. The bottom of the bag becomes the dinosaur's face. Use markers, colored paper, and googly eyes to decorate your bag.
Don't forget important dinosaur features like horns (paper snow cone cups make great ready-made horns), plates, and teeth. Discuss with students what kind of teeth a meat-eater would have (sharp and slightly curved) and what kind of teeth a plant-eater would have (long, skinny, pencil-like teeth in the front and/or short, flat teeth [like our molars] on the sides).
After seeing Savage Ancient Seas students may choose to make a sea
creature, like a Megalodon shark or a sea turtle with a beak.
Dino Math
Any number of math activities can be done with a couple dozen small (and
inexpensive!) plastic dinosaurs. Have students take turns estimating the number of dinosaurs in a container, and then discuss methods for the class to do an actual count (break up into small groups and then add all the groups' sums together…) They can be used as manipulatives in counting, adding, and subtracting exercises. Pick five dinosaurs and give them each a price tag. Then ask students to figure out what coins they would need in order to buy each dinosaur.
Dino Tracking
Before class, use several different plastic dinosaurs to create dinosaur tracks in clay. Roll out clay into slabs and have children press tracks from the plastic dinosaurs into the clay. Wash and dry dinosaurs. Set up tracks at “stations” around the room. Group students so that each group has a plastic dinosaur. Their job is to find the tracks made by their dinosaur. When everyone is finished, discuss how students knew which track belonged to their dinosaur. (For example: the size, the number of feet touching the ground, the number of toes, or the distance between the legs). Explain to students that paleontologists use the very same techniques to study real dinosaur tracks.
Make Your Own "Fossil" Imprint
Discuss the difference between a fossil remain (when part or all of a living thing becomes a fossil) and an imprint (an impression left behind by a living thing that becomes a fossil, like a foot print). To help students understand the concept of an imprint, give each student a small ball of play dough or clay. Hand out an object to each student to press into the clay or play dough to create an impression. Shells, chicken bones, plastic fish, plastic insects, or even plastic all work well. Then set the impressions aside to dry.
Suggested
Web and Print Resources
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Use the Berkshire Athenaeum’s on-line catalogue to search for these print resources in Central/Western Massachusetts.
Print
Materials for Students
Barner, Bob. Dinosaur Bones. San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC, 2001.
Bright illustrations will keep your students' interest as this book tells how
scientists study dinosaurs. It also includes highlights of a few of everyone’s
favorite dinosaurs.
Mitton, Tony. Dinosaurumpus. New York: Orchard Books, 2002.
Join in with Triceratops, Stegosaurus and friends as the dinosaurs stir up a
Dinosaurumpus. Students will love the refrain that they can say along with
the reader.
Sabuda, Robert and Matthew Reinhart. Sharks and Other Sea Monsters (Encyclopedia Prehistorica Series). Candlewick Press, 2006. A very engaging pop-up book with images of prehistoric sea creatures and skeletons.
Schnetzler, Pattie. Ten Little Dinosaurs. Denver: Accord Publishing Ltd., 1996.
The silly escapades of ten different dinosaurs are described in rhyming
verses. This book has a pair of large googly eyes that add humor to every
page.
Touch and Feel Dinosaur. New York: DK Publishing, Inc., 2002. Touch T. rex’s bumpy skin, Triceratops' smooth horns and Stegosaurus’ rough plates. This is a good book for students to explore individually.
Yolen, Jane. How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? New York: The Blue Sky
Press, 2000. Dinosaurs bring humor to familiar good-night antics known by every child.
Print
Materials For Educators
Benton, Mike. Walking with Dinosaurs. New York: DK Publishing, 2000.
Clear explanations of how paleontologists know what they know, and how the television show Walking with Dinosaurs was created.
Dixon, Dougal et al. The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and
Prehistoric Creatures. NY: Macmillan, 1988. This book contains a huge
number of fantastic color illustrations. It depicts and describes many species of dinosaurs and lesser-known species of prehistoric reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, and mammals.
Ellis, Richard. Sea Dragons. University Press of Kansas, 2003. Marine wildlife
artist Richard Ellis draws from the fossil record to create drawings of Mesozoic life forms like mososaurs, icthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs, and to describe what their habitats and their lives might have been like.
Lambert, David. The Ultimate Dinosaur Book. New York: Dorling Kindersley (In association with The Natural History Museum, London), 1993. A terrific overview of dinosaurs and their time, followed by "profiles" of specific dinosaurs and dinosaur groups.
Norell, Mark A., Eugene S. Gaffney, and Lowell Dingus. Discovering Dinosaurs
In the American Museum of Natural History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. A very informative book with illustrations of fossils in the Museum's collection. It addresses the toughest questions and controversies about dinosaurs, like, were dinosaurs cold-blooded or warm-blooded and did birds evolve from dinosaurs. It also describes the techniques used by paleontologists to study prehistoric life.
Web
Materials for Students
Dinosaur Eggs Museum
Watch animated clips of model dinosaurs emerging from their eggs.
Enchanted Learning
This is a fun, educational site for audiences as young as preschool with user-friendly pages about dinosaurs and fossils, along with craft projects and printable coloring and activity pages.
Nature of New England
Illustrations of dinosaurs discovered in North America.
Zoom Dinosaurs
This is an on-line hypertext book about dinosaurs. It is designed for students of all ages and levels of comprehension with information on dinosaurs, extinction, fossils, and more.
Web
Materials for Educators
Life in the Cretaceous Seas
The American Museum of Natural History’s Millstein Hall of Ocean Life pages feature images and information about the Earth’s ancient oceans.
NASA Classroom of the Future
This site offers online references, links, activities, crafts, and lesson plans.
Oceans of Kansas
A website about the fossilized remains from the oceans of interior North
America during the Cretaceous Period. The site was designed by the Adjunct Curator of Paleontology of the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, Kansas.
Fossil Resource
Two Guys Fossils is a supplier of real fossils, replicas, posters, and dinosaur models, with many items available at reasonable prices. Fossils come with information about the species and the location where the specimen was found.
National Geographic News
A search of the archived news stories will yield many interesting articles about new findings in paleontology in a brief, easy-to-understand format.
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Department of Paleobiology:
Dinosaur Exhibits
This site provides information about specific species of dinosaurs and includes images of fossils that are in the Museum's collection. Other features include a Top 10 list debunking common misconceptions, an article on field work, information about prehistoric life forms other than dinosaurs, and a step-by-step look at how dinosaur skeletons are reconstructed for Museum display.
University of California Museum of Paleontology
If you are looking for specific information, using their search function is very helpful. This site has many different kinds of resources to offer, including online exhibits, a site called Dinobuzz covering exciting new research and controversial topics, and modules for educators on topics like Understanding Evolution, Explorations Through Time, and Learning from the Fossil Record.
 The
Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent Federal
grant- making agency dedicated to creating and sustaining a nation
of learners by helping libraries and museums serve their communities
supports the Berkshire Museum.
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