What do you know about dinosaurs?

Bradley: They eat meat
Crystal: the dinosaurs that eat meat have sharp teeth and when they bite blood come out.
Noah: Some dinosaurs are still alive.
Quinn: Bones of dinosaurs are called fossils.
Aston: Some little dinosaurs steal other dinosaurs eggs.
Keira: The big one died because a big meteor came down and made lots of dust.
Jewels: There were heaps of asteroids that came in the water and made a Tsunami.
Noah: What is a Tsunami?
Ashtyn: A lot of people.
Sean: It’s when a volcano erupts and shakes the ground and some rivers turn to lava. That’s what killed the dinosaurs.
Bradley: It’s a big flood. The volcano erupted.
Molly: It’s where people used to fight in a war.

At this point we stopped and had a talk about Tsunamis, some children were able to make connections with what they had seen of the Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami.

Matt: There’s grass eaters and they only eat grass and weeds not meat.
Alicya: Some dinosaurs eat plants and they are small.
D: Dinosaurs lay eggs.
Eve: some dinosaurs can fly.
Harriet: some dinosaurs itch themselves.
Ashtyn: Some dinosaurs are scared of T-Rex.
Bradley: Tyrannosaurus’ weren’t around for very long.
Molly: Some dinosaurs have spikes going all down their bodies.
Sean: Some have them on their tails.
Shaun: When dinosaurs get scared of T-Rex, they fight them.
D: They are all different and some have long necks.
Crystal: some dinosaurs eat other dinosaurs, they eat the whole family.

At this point I divided the children into groups, gave them a fact sheet about a particular dinosaur and asked the to go away and see what they could find out, with the expectation that each child would have one fact to share back.
Ashtyn: We had stegosaurus, it had a small head and a tiny brain.
Harriet: It has sharp pieces on the tail and it could cut people.
Jewels: It has little feet.
Zoe: We had Allosaurus, it has sharp claws and small arms.
Crystal: It’s a big dinosaur and it is bigger than a person.
Lucia: It can run fast because of its claws.
Matt: We had Ankylosuarus, It has spikes on its back.
Noah: It has a tiny head.
Thomas: It lived 70-65 million years ago.
Tyrannosaurus Rex
D: It has 3 toes and 2 fingers.
Quinn: Their bones were hollow.
Miss B: What does that mean?
Ashton: There is nothing in the bones because when we smashed the concrete in the garage there was nothing under it.
Parasauralophus
Ashton: It has a stiff tail and powerful legs. It has frog feet and a toothless beak.
Miss B: How would it eat?
Quinn: It might use it’s tongue.
Bradley: It moves its jaw side to side.
Quinn: It uses its tongue like a giraffe, it rolls it round leaves.
D: Like an elephant. Elephants use their trunks.