One of my favorite recent acquisitions is a nearly complete set of Brown Paper School Books. Since the weather was cooperating last week, we did a really fun activity from the Big Beast book of dinosaurs. The cool thing about the Brown Paper books is that while the title suggests you may be learning about one thing (in this case, dinosaurs), you're really learning about a whole bunch of other stuff at the same time. I think in this activity, we were able to combine a little writing, math, crafts, PE, geology, history, a break at the park, and practical skills, like a small grocery shopping trip, using an automated check-out clerk.
We started out making ten signs for pivotal periods in the earth's history, including the present, the appearance of first true humans, last dinosaurs, first dinosaurs, first land animals, etc, etc. Each sign included the name of the period, it's chief characteristic (along with an amusing illustration), and the number of steps we would be taking back in time. Each step was to represent a million years. We had some notion of what a million years looked like, because we had also completed an earlier activity comparing our age, represented by about 1/32" on a ruler, to a million years, represented by a football field. So the steps we would be taking were the equivalent of one football field each, or 1,000,000 years. Got that?
We located a suitable field not too far from our house, and started planting signs. We attracted the attention of a Middle-Eastern grandma with two kids, and a gentleman and his dog, but other than that, no one bothered us.
This is what it looked like after Nadia planted the 7th sign (The first two ones are really close together, so they look like one. Believe it or not, only two measly steps separate the civilized creatures that we are today from our early human ancestors.) We continued to plant signs 8 and 9, and celebrate the milestones along the way.
After sign number 9, we only had one more to plant. But it presented a problem:
To go back to the beginning of time would require us to take an additional 4160 steps (about 2 miles?) for the total 4600 required. So, we decided to cheat a bit. We walked an estimated 1500 steps to the local Jewel, bought some snacks, and supplies for the Jello geology project (there is a bad pun in there somewhere), took a few extra steps around the store for good measure, went outside, and planted our sign.
So the beginning of the earth is now officially at the Jewel-Osco at Foster and Pulaski in Chicago.
What a great project to make that info so real to the kids. Where do you get these ideas?
I've been meaning to ask you about how you use legos for math. Is there a resource online somewhere or did you just play around and figure it out?
Anyway, great project!
Posted by: Kim | April 08, 2008 at 07:37 PM
Well, that project was straight out of the Big Beast book. These books are so full of fun, simple projects, that I just can't decide what to do next. You can almost pull any one activity out of a hat, and it will be a success.
The legos, well, that's another story. I just happen to have a kid who is not only a lego fiend, but also has an intuitive spatial sense (though he doesn't recognize it as a mathematical ability). He comes up with structures, and I point to the math in them. But we don't do that in any organized sort of way. It's just that I find that whenever legos can be incorporated in any way, the popularity of the lessons, and attentiveness of the students tend to increase.
Posted by: Justyna | April 08, 2008 at 10:20 PM
I get it. We tried to do a lego pyramid together and ran out of the right sized pieces. So we have the base!
Posted by: kim | April 10, 2008 at 07:55 AM
You can "cheat" by putting larger pieces where they won't be seen, as long as they understand that the basic unit of measure is the single lego brick (the one with the four dots). Let me know if you need to borrow any legos. My house is overflowing with them.
Posted by: Justyna | April 10, 2008 at 08:42 AM
I loved using Blood and Guts when I was a middle school science teacher. That is the only one I own, but I am going to check out the others. Thanks for the tip.
Posted by: Denyse | April 10, 2008 at 03:34 PM
I LOVE the Brown Paper School books! This is a great project!
Posted by: Kristen | April 10, 2008 at 03:57 PM
This is brilliant. Your kids will never forget this, and it will give them a reference with which to understand the history of the earth forever. Amazing.
Posted by: Lizabeth | April 12, 2008 at 02:47 PM
That is such an awesome idea!
Posted by: Summer | April 17, 2008 at 09:45 PM
Holy mackerel, Summer, do you gave any idea what you did to my traffic?! Glad you liked the project, and thanks for stumblingupon me.
Posted by: Justyna | April 18, 2008 at 07:02 AM