In researching the state of New Jersey I found out it was the site of the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton, it was just missing a skull.
Haddonfield, New Jersey was the site of the dig, and so that is how the hadrosaurus was named. I was all excited and was going to make that our animal for New Jersey, but apparently we don’t know all that much about it. Mainly because there is no skull found for one, which is leading to a lot of theories that this may not be a separate species. Now, the state of New Jersey is not going along with that theory.
So, in honor of this being the site of the first dinosaur dig I decided to have our own dinosaur dig, you know with 11 kids crowded around my dining room table. I searched my Evernote to find ideas, and all of them took a lot more time to prepare (because of course I decided to do this the night before).
Finally, success! I had clipped a blog post by Monkeyin’ Around that was perfect (scroll about halfway down to find the idea).
When they all got there we first read “Digging Up Dinosaurs,” which I knew from past experience would be perfect for this. As a caveat it does say millions and millions of years ago and all of the other evolutionary stuff, but I just said, “A long time ago,” (in a galaxy far far away).
Each kid got a small tub filled with rice and a pasta shell, about 10-15 penne pasta, 4 macaroni noodles, and 10-15 orzo noodles.
Their job was to dig through the pasta and put together a dinosaur skeleton.
Let me just say this activity was a HIT with all of the kids from the 11 year old girl to my 4 year.
All of the kids asked to take home their rice and pasta mixture, so I gave them bags to put it in.
I will warn you this does require sweeping up afterwards or a good vacuum. If I’d planned better I would have used bigger tubs and less rice, but I didn’t think ahead super well, and these were the size tubs we had.
So, not a perfect project, but really fun.
I LOVE it!! What a fun idea. I'm going to have to try this with Hailey.
https://ourcraftsnthings.com
Great idea! This is so much better than the store bought kit things that never really go together and make an even bigger mess.
This is a really cool idea! And at least you can sweep/vacuum the mess!
What fun! I bet they loved finding the pieces to a dinosaur:-)
Thanks for sharing!
Kerri
Now I have to look up that dinosauar. It's been interesting to us, how scientists build entire skeletons from one or two bones – the kids would like to see something that was found so complete.
I like your addition of actually building a dinosaur with the “bones.” Very cute!
We had a dino dig once that was just dog bones. They did that over and over until the dog bones started to fall apart!
I love this idea, the fact that the kids actually got to dig up bones and put their own dinosaurs together is great.
Great idea! Looks like they had fun 🙂 I'm curious about Evernote…I've heard it mentioned a few times in various places…do you find it useful?
I'll have to remember this when we get to NJ. Very cool!
Th Headless Dinosaur…perhaps he knew Ichobad Crane…
What a fantastic idea! I am excited to be joining in for the first time. I first saw “Science Sunday” at Our Side of the Mountain a while back, and have wanted to join in since then. Great link up!
Very neat idea! We did dino dig with one of those 3D puzzles that I got at Michael's, but your dig is way cool. I didn't know about NJ dig even though I lived in NJ for many years. I am curious to see what else you will do with this state.