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Self-guiding in the Galleries
Pre-During-Post Visit Resources
Gallery of Dinosaurs and Paleontology

Grades 1-2

Scroll down the page to find items on the menu below or click on a link to jump to an item.

During Your Visit
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Things You Don't Want to Miss
Discussion Questions
Activities
Go to the Gallery of Dinosaurs and Paleontology page

Before and After Your Visit
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Important Terms and Concepts
Activities
Print and Web Resources

	Apatosaurus Femur This is a life-size replica of a leg bone that helped carry one of the largest land animals ever to walk the earth. Weighing up to 25 tons, this plant-eating, long-necked dinosaur lived 150 million years ago in the western United States and reached a length of 69 feet!
	Stegosaurus Plate This replica allows visitors to feel all of the bumps and grooves on a Stegosaurus' plate. The plate belonged to a 30 foot, 2 ton animal that lived about 150 million years ago. There is some debate about the primary function of Stegosaurus' plates, but they were most likely an early form of climate control, allowing the large plant eater to regulate temperature. Undoubtedly they also provided some defense and may have attracted potential mates.
	Dinosaur Dig With goggles in place and brush in hand, children are transformed into junior paleontologists, as they excavate replicas of dinosaur skeletons at this simulated excavation site. Nearby signs help visitors identify the bones they uncover.
	Dino Den A cozy spot to play with dinosaur puppets and figures, read picture books, and piece together puzzles.

Here are some questions for teachers, chaperones and students to think about while visiting the exhibit.

• Which dinosaur is your favorite? Why?
• How do we know what we know about dinosaurs?
• How are fossils formed?
• What's the difference between a fossil and a rock?
• Were people and dinosaurs living at the same time?
• How can you tell a dinosaur from other prehistoric animals?

Comparing and Contrasting Sizes
The dinosaur gallery's walls are painted with life size dinosaurs. After observing the walls, have students make statements comparing themselves to different dinosaurs, or comparing and contrasting two dinosaurs. For example, "The Apatosaurus is bigger than me, " or "The Velociraptor is smaller than the Triceratops."

Dino Hunt!
Have students, working with partners, go on a scavenger hunt. Click here for a printable page of items to search for. You can give each student a copy of the page and ask them to circle each item as they find it in the gallery, or you can give each pair of students one item to search for at a time: simply cut the page into strips, so that each item can be given out individually. Click here for complete directions/worksheet.

Excavate!
Visit the Dinosaur Dig, a simulated excavation site where students can uncover replicas of dinosaur skeletons. As students are digging, challenge them to think about what kind of bones they are finding. What part of the dinosaur's body have they found? Which kind of dinosaur might they have found: a long-neck, a meat-eater, a duck bill, a triceratops, etc.? Diagrams adjacent to each section of the Dig provide a key identifying the type of bones to be found and the dinosaur they represent.

You may want to familiarize your students with the following terms before your visit to the museum.

• Carnivore
  an animal that eats other animals, or meat.
• Herbivore
  a plant-eating animal.
• Paleontologist
  a scientist who studies prehistoric life through the examination of fossilized remains.
• Reptile
  a group of air-breathing animals that relying 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.
• Mammal
  a group of animals that nourish their young with milk produced by mammary glands, have hair, and regulating internal body temperature through internal means such as burning food for energy, shivering, sweating, etc.
• Extinct
  no longer existing.
• Replica
  a copy or close reproduction of something.
• Classify
  to arrange into groups based on shared characteristics.

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 dough (or clay) to create an impression. Shells, chicken bones, plastic fish, plastic insects, or even plastic all work well. Then set the impressions aside to dry.

Dino Dioramas
Ask students to pick one particular dinosaur to focus on. Encourage them to research what their dinosaur was like, including what it ate, where it lived, and what other plants and animals it might have encountered. Students can then create a small sculpture of their dinosaur out of clay. Shoeboxes make an excellent dinosaur habitat (ask a local shoe store to save boxes for you). Students can design a prehistoric habitat for their dinosaur inside their box using colored paper, pipe cleaners, colored clay, paint and markers.

Assessment: Make a K-W-L Goal Sheet
As a class, make a K-W-L chart. Include these three columns or sections…What I Know about Dinosaurs…What I Want to Learn about Dinosaurs…What I Learned about Dinosaurs. Pre-visit, have the students brainstorm ideas for the first two columns of the chart. Post-visit, ask the students to share what they have learned and fill in the third column.

Suggested Print and Web Resources

Use the Berkshire Athenaeum’s on-line catalogue to search for these print resources in Central/Western Massachusetts.

Print and Web Materials for Students

Aliki (Aliki Brandenberg). Digging Up Dinosaurs. NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1988. A charming, cartoon-illustrated book that leads the reader through all the steps of paleontology, from locating and excavating fossils, to cleaning and studying them, to the final assembly of a skeleton in a Museum.

Nature of New England
Illustrations of dinosaurs discovered in North America.

Wahl, Jan and Bob Doucet. The Field Mouse and the Dinosaur Named Sue. Cartwheel Books, 2000. This engaging story about a displaced field mouse walks readers through the process of assembling the skeleton of the now- famous T. rex named Sue at the Chicago Field Museum.

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.

Print and Web Materials for Educators

Courtenay-Thompson, Fiona and Mary Lindsday (Ed.) The Visual Dictionary of Dinosaurs (Eyewitness Visual Dictionaries). New York: Dorling Kindersly Publishing, Inc., 1993. A good basic introduction to the dinosaur groups and species, and includes plenty of images.

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.

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, as 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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