Fulgurite

Can't go wrong with a fulgurite!















Every year, I gift the children with a mineral, rock, or fossil.  The idea is that by the time they leave our community, the children will have the beginnings of a class set...AND they will have acquired the itch to collect more.

This year, a good friend acquired a class set of fulgurites at the Houston Gem & Mineral Society Annual Show.  Fulgurites are formed when lightning hits the ground and melts and fuses sand together, leaving a rock impression of its path.

When they opened the gifts and we talked about what they were, one child exclaimed, "Awesome!  I can add this to my collection!"  Exactly!

Universe Story Artwork

Now that we have a blank wall long enough to display all of them, I finally got these beauties framed and onto the wall!  Aren't they lovely?

Each poster is batik on handmade mulberry paper. 

This gorgeous artwork features the Universe Story, the Montessori Great Lesson with which we begin every year.  The story marks the beginnings of our studies of science, geography, and history.  “An integrated curriculum of history, geography, biology, and physical science is the heart and soul of an authentic Montessori elementary classroom” (Children of the Universe).  To place these subjects in context and give children “the big picture,” we begin every year with the story of how scientists believe the universe was created.  Maria Montessori felt that an understanding of the universe was the basis for all knowledge.  She writes, “let us give [the child] a vision of the whole universe” (To Educate the Human Potential).  The “Universe Story” is told in a dramatic way, with demonstrations such as an erupting volcano model (which went a little higher this year than intended!), to strike the child’s imagination and inspire a sense of wonder. 

Thank you to the Hartye/Morgan family for gifting these to our classroom, and thank you to my mother for sponsoring the framing.

From the Inside Out

from our Priority Montessori Inner Earth nomenclature

We are learning about the layers of the earth . . . by building a small model from the inside out.








from Guest Authors S.A., 3rd grade; O.S., 2nd grade; C.H., 1st grade:
Yesterday, we learned about the different layers of the earth.  They are the crust, the asthenosphere, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core.  The crust is the outside layer of the earth.  It is a thin layer with rocks and dirt.  The asthenosphere is right under the crust.  It is a thin layer too, made up of melted rock.  When the magma comes out of volcanoes, it is called lava.  Next is the mantle and it is a thick, mostly-solid layer.  Then comes the outer core.  It is right outside of the inner core.  The inner core is the middle of the earth.  It is a solid ball of iron.  


Today, students worked in pairs to make Layers of the Earth necklaces.

(We used Sculpey Bake Shop oven-bake polymer clay.)

We began with the inner core.

Next, we wrapped yellow around the inner core to represent the outer core.















We covered that with a layer of orange to represent the mantle.




















Over the mantle went a thin, thin layer of brown to represent the crust.  This was followed by thin pieces of blue spread over about 3/4 of the Earth to represent the hydrosphere.

Spheres were carefully placed in trays labeled with student names and stacked to take home.  After a short stint in the freezer, they were ready to be cut into hemispheres, revealing the layers.

I used a toothpick to drill a hole across the top of each half, and then baked them at 275 degrees Fahrenheit for about half an hour.

I then threaded each hemisphere with narrow ribbon to make a necklace.

Ta-da!

There's a Book for That!
How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World by Faith McNulty
The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth by Joanna Cole

There's also a cake!

Plates and playdough

Geology is a favorite topic in our classroom, and in the last few weeks, we've been digging in!

We learned about the layers of the earth and studied soil sediments under microscopes and tested their varying abilities to retain water.  We performed a series of tests to identify mystery minerals.  This week, we've been exploring changes to the earth's surface caused by plate tectonics.

First, we used graham crackers and (heavily) colored frosting to model the action of the earth's plates and the soft asthenosphere on which they float.  














The children experimented with divergent plates, slowly pushing the plates away from each other to create underwater rifts or mountain ranges.

Next, the children experimented with convergent plates, pushing the plates toward each other so that either one plate slips under the other (creating volcanoes) or the plates crash into each other creating a mountain range as in the photo below.  (The trick for this model is to moisten the edges of the graham crackers).

Finally, children modeled the cause of earthquakes at transform fault lines, where plates rub back and forth against each other.

To enhance this lesson, I was thrilled to discover (at the CAST conference last weekend) a Pangea cookie cutter and mat developed in Texas Christian University's Idea Factory by students from the College of Science & Engineering.  What an incredible hands-on way to explore continental drift!  Everyone needs a Pangaea cookie cutter!  Don't you think?

 This (making play dough late at night) is why I have a bag of old flour in my freezer labeled "For Science."

Note: Graham cracker activity based on activities from Geology Rocks by Cindy Blobaum

Bringing Field Work into Focus

Maria Montessori writes, “Let us take the child out to show him real things instead of making objects which represent ideas and closing them in cupboards" (From Childhood to Adolescence).

Thus is the nature of field work.

Yesterday, was Field Day at our school, but due to rescheduling because of weather, our class was on a field trip instead.  "We're doing Field Work instead of Field Day.  I think ours is better," commented one child as our bus pulled away from the school.  I must say, I completely agree.





To go out of a classroom to enter the outside world

. . . is obviously to open an immense door to instruction.

--Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence

Field work allows us to "take the child out to show him real things."  We go out into the world beyond the classroom walls and live the experience of scientific process in an outdoor setting.









Five years ago, I had the pleasure and honor of participating in the Paleontology Field School for Educators, offered by the paleontologists from the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  This program is a unique opportunity to participate in the scientific process as museum paleontologists find, unearth, document, and remove fossils from the Red Beds of North Central Texas.  Rather than the clean, sterile impression imparted by a visit to a museum where we see only the end-result, field science is dirty.  It's experiential.  And it's a process.  Paleontologists are detectives, engaged in the puzzle-solving process of assembling clues, piecing together a picture of how portions of the earth's past might have looked.  As I continue to volunteer with the field team, our view of how this habitat might have looked 280 million years ago changes over time, as more evidence is gathered.


My own field science experiences have shifted my approach to field trips for children.  Instead of being passive observers on field trips, I am convinced that children need to become active participants in field work so that they begin to understand that science isn't a static set of facts.  It is a process by which we use evidence to build our understanding of the world around us (and demolish and reconstruct that understanding when the evidence requires).  The children need to dig their hands into the dirt and engage in inquiry, grappling with the questions, "What do we observe?  Are there any patterns?  What are some possible explanations for the evidence we're finding?  Are there any other possible explanations?"  It was this appreciation for field work that compelled me to write a Target Field Trip Grant so that I could take the children to the river's edge for fossil field work.


screening for tiny fossils such as shark teeth

To do this successfully, the children (rather than the environment) must be properly prepared with skills and tools (along with awareness of potential hazards).  For the past month or so, the children have been engaged in Timeline of Life research on the Eras, Periods, and Epochs of earth's history.  They have learned to classify organisms by five kingdoms (Monera/Bacteria, Protoctista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia), sort and graph animals as vertebrate or invertebrate, and then classify organisms from the animal kingdom by phylum.  In class, we modeled the process of vertebrate paleontology as I experienced it in the Red Beds.  The children worked with fossil matrix from the site where we would be digging to practice finding, sorting, and identifying fossils (mostly marine invertebrate) so that they would be primed to recognize the fossils found at this particular locality; classifying the mollusk fossils by class (bivalve, gastropod, scaphopod, or cephalopod); proper use of tools (including a sharp probe); and gathering and organizing data in the form of charts and graphs.  We gathered and organized tools (sharp probes, forceps, trowels, screwdrivers, brushes, straws, screens, magnifiers, measuring tapes & centimeter rulers, collection bags, field notebooks, field guides, and a field microscope) and discussed potential hazards (sharp tools, snakes, poison ivy, scorpions, a train trestle, a highway, and a major river) and how to keep ourselves safe.



consulting with David Temple, Associate Curator of
Paleontology, to identify a fossil

Our fossil field work cultivated curiosity and fostered some serious excitement about science.  It promoted an understanding of the process of field science, and it also allowed students to practice science process skills (observation, classification, identification, measurement, collection and analysis of data, inference, communication) and use the tools of science in an authentic context.  It allowed them to consult with geology and paleontology experts (and view scientists as accessible resources), but it also allowed them to see themselves as scientists.



brushing dirt away to reveal fossils

teasing tiny fossils from the matrix





using a screwdriver to pry matrix away from the bank of the river
 

using a field guide to identify fossils

taking notes in personal field notebook



collaborating to classify fossil finds



organizing data in a chart






How many fossilized burrows (trace fossils)
fit in your backpack?



recording data in the group's field notebook

There's a Book for That!

If You Are a Hunter of Fossils by Byrd Baylor

From Lava to Life by Jennifer Morgan

In My Own Backyard by Julie Kurjian

Fossils Tell of Long Ago by Aliki

Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter by Sally M. Walker

Finding the First T. Rex by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

There's a song for that, too!
National Fossil Day Song by NPS/Jeff Wolin
Fossil Rocks by Tom McFadden
I am a Palentologist by They Might Be Giants
 

Thank you to Target Field Trip Grants, Becks Prime, and the Sarmiento Family for generously sponsoring our expensive bus (with a bathroom in the back).  Thank you to the Houston Museum of Natural Science and Associate Curator of Paleontology David Temple for generously providing seven volunteers and staff who served as experts for the children's field work.  Thank you to the nine chaperones who joined us to ensure our children were safe and focused on investigating.



Bones below the surface

Last week's fast-forward erosion revealed some interesting finds that our scientists were interested in investigating further.  Today, we strapped on our vertebrate paleontologist hats (Oh, yes!  There are hats!), and got busy.








shark coprolite

When I am working with the paleontology dig team in Seymour, we almost always spend some time prospecting. Basically, this means we wander around in 120+ degree Fahrenheit temps in areas we haven't yet found fossils, looking at the ground and hoping to find evidence of a new site.  If someone spies something (a bone, a footprint, a tooth, coprolites sprinkled everywhere, an entire dimetrodon vertebral column just lying there in the dirt), 
Dr. Bakker shouts, "Find more!" and the rest of us congregate and start crawling around on the ground.  If a site proves fruitful, we spend more time there, carefully excavating the fossils, documenting as we go.

Dr. Robert Bakker

Today, my own team of diggers modeled (in climate-controlled comfort) the process we use in the field.  After fossils were discovered, the team selected a name for the site.  The fossils were separated from the surrounding matrix, with great care not to cause damage in the process.  Very specialized tools such as dollar store makeup brushes and Subway straws are used for this task.

brushing sediment from the bone



brushing off Willi

using a straw to blow sediment away from the bone

The fossil is measured in place.



To preserve the evidence, clear plastic
is placed over the bones to create a map.
A compass is used to identify North on the map.

Each bone is traced to document the bones' position
in relationship to one another before the fossils are removed
 and the evidence is destroyed.





The children apply their knowledge
of skeletal anatomy to identify
the bones of their mystery animal.





Bones are removed from their surrounding matrix
and pieced together, like a puzzle, if possible.

The surrounding matrix is screened
to check for tiny bones, such as toes and teeth,
that may have been missed
as the larger bones were removed.

While deposition covers dead organisms and allows them to fossilize, it is erosion that reveals them, allowing us access to layers of rock containing evidence of life from millions of years ago.  In Seymour, Texas it is life from the Permian Period of the late Paleozoic Era (about 280 million years ago, millions of years before the dinosaurs!) that is now exposed on or near the surface.  In Bryan, Texas, the exposed layers are from a time much more recent--the Eocene Epoch, the second portion of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era (about 45 million years ago).  River banks, where water has worn away layers of time, are excellent places for fossil hunting.  So are areas where people have scraped away the earth, such as road cuts, construction sites, and even a spot intended as a dump.

 

There's a Book for That!

Barnum's Bones: How Barnum Brown Discovered the Most Famous Dinosaur in the World by Tracey Fern

Finding the First T. Rex by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

If You Are a Hunter of Fossils by Byrd Baylor

From Lava to Life by Jennifer Morgan

In My Own Backyard by Julie Kurjian

Fossils Tell of Long Ago by Aliki

Digging Up Dinosaurs by Aliki

Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter by Sally M. Walker