DINO WARS

T.Rex is by far the most famous dinosaur and kids love how huge and dangerous they were. This weeks class was called DINO WARS and I started the class with a book called DINO DINNER and as we read it I talked about carnivores (meat eaters), herbivores (plant eaters), and omnivores (eats both). We then did and experiment to see how the large sauropods (brachisaurus et al) ate and survived. I explained that they were so large that they had to eat all day to stay alive. Many of the trees were evergreens and I had them think about eating a Christmas Tree. The leaves were tough and these animals didn't have time to chew, so they used a gizzard. I had a Tupperware container with a great fitting lid. I put a lettuce leaf in it torn into very large pieces and put the top on and we passed it around and each child shook it, pretending that it was a dino stomach. When I dumped it at the end they could see their was no change to the leaves. I then explained that these dinos swallowed rocks that went into a separate stomach called a gizzard. I then put the leaves back in with the rocks and we passed it around again. Make sure the top won't come off here and send rocks flying. When we dumped it this time you could see they looked like they had been chewed. After several months the rocks would get polished and not work as well so the dinosaur would have to spit them up and swallow new rough ones. I then brought out a potato masher, spatula, bread knife and golf tee. I named a dinosaur and had the kids guess which utensil would be most like their teeth. Parasoralophus and other duck bills would have grinding teeth like the potato masher. Mamenchisaurus would have teeth like spatulas to shovel in leaves. Spinosaurus had teeth like the knife. Baryonx had claws to catch fish with like the gold tee. Then I had Swedish Fish and let each child stab a fish with the golf tee (their claw) and eat them.

The book DINO WARS has a point system for each dinosaur. The largest number wins. I had cards with dino pictures on them. Two children would throw down a card and we check points to see who would win. We ended with a tie between T. Rex and Gigantasaurus. I then thew down an asteroid who scientists think defeated them all.

National Geographic has a great website filled with bizare dinosaurs and we looked at some of these.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/12/bizarre-dinosaurs/dinosaur-interactive

Our project was a small dinosaur world made inside of a plastic ball that I ordered from Discount School Supplies. We used model magic for dirt, volcanoes, lava, and water. Fake plants made the trees and 2 tiny T. Rex figurines went inside. We carry these at Science Safari.