Time Line for Dinosaurs

The children in my grade one class were excited about exploring the idea of when the dinosaurs lived. They didn't realize when we started our study that not all dinosaurs lived at the same time. They learned through our research that dinosaurs  lived in different time periods. They became even more excited when we started plotting the dinosaurs onto our time line to see which period would win (meaning which period did most students favorite dinosaur come from). It was also interesting to find that in our class no one chose a dinosaur from the Triassic period to study.

Time Concept

We started exploring the concept of time by seeing how long it took us to do things. While the group and I clapped or patted our legs and counted how many beats, one child would tie his shoe or another would write her name. We experimented with a number of activities like this. The best ones were when I kept track of how long it took the children to come in to class or how long to clean up after an activity. We kept track of the results and the children tried to improve their times and the result was more efficient use of time.

The next activity to help us get into this concept of time was sharing what we did in a morning, an afternoon and an evening in a accordion type book made from the top down using a legal size piece of paper.

After this activity we did a survey that was more specific. This survey was completed at home and at school. To lead into this I read the story of The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. We had made individual clocks and for a second reading we explored telling time to the hour. When I felt the children understood the idea of showing time on their clocks to the hour I reread The Grouchy Ladybug and the children plotted the times on their clocks. The written assignment that followed looked like this:

Children took the survey home and filled in the schedule. To share their research from home the children went with a partner and used a clock to map out the times in their day. The times the children were at school we filled in the chart together as a class.

Following this a discussion ensued that explored the idea of activities that only happen on some days of the week like music, phys. ed, soccer or dancing.

Children's Timelines

Now that we had explored times that were more immediate I decided to send home another survey that showed a timeline of highlights in the children's lives. The children were very excited about sharing this information with their peers. The children and their parents five important events since they were born to share on their timeline.

Following this we talked about how my timeline would be different and how our grandparents timelines would go back even further in time.

Dinosaur Time Line

Now that we had had an opportunity to explore time in our lives I felt that we could look at when the dinosaurs lived. Alongside collecting and sharing all this data we were researching our favorite dinosaurs. To lead into our research we did a whole group activity using a web format and plotting out what dinosaurs looked like, what they ate, how big they were and when they lived. I provided the books, a picture of the dinosaur they were collecting information on and the group members they would be reading with. After reading we plotted the information on the webs together.

For the next more independent project I provided another chart for them to collect their data in.

After this data was collected the children painted a large version of their dinosaur and then we plotted the dinosaurs on the timeline on the bulletin board using their chart for a reference.

Cretaceous Pictures

Jurassic Pictures