Smallwood Academy Study Dinosaurs as Part of Exciting Term Topic

Dinosaur Drawings and Super Spelling

A day of dinosaur workshops with the Key Stage 1 children and the Reception class at Smallwood CofE Primary Academy in Cheshire and what a busy day it was too.  Under the enthusiastic tutelage of the dedicated teaching team, the children in Ash, Elm and Willow classes have been learning all about prehistoric animals and famous fossil hunters such as Mary Anning.

Several of the children had brought in their own fossil finds to show their classmates.  The children’s splendid fossils are not quite as big as the “gigantic”, “giant”, “humongous” Jurassic ammonites that our dinosaur expert took into school.  However, we are sure that the fossils that the children brought in will help to enrich this exciting term topic.  After explaining how fossils formed, there was lots of fossil handling and plenty of opportunities for the pupils to try out some super describing words.

Ash Class (Year 1) Design Dinosaurs

Year 1 children design dinosaurs.  Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Extension Activities

One of the extension activities involved challenging the class to design their own prehistoric animals.  Could the pupils label the body parts including the skull?  Could they come up with a name to describe their very own dinosaur?  Having worked with the Key Stage 1 classes in the morning, during the lunch break, our dinosaur expert was handed a selection of the drawings from the budding young palaeontologists in Ash class (Year 1) – what a colourful collection of dinosaurs!

A Pink and Green Dinosaur from Florence

Florence (Ash class) designed a very colourful dinosaur.  Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

New Dinosaur Discoveries

At Everything Dinosaur, we keep a register of newly described and named dinosaurs.  On average, a new dinosaur is named every three weeks and so far around 1,200 different genera have been erected – there are certainly lots of amazing dinosaurs to help inspire the children with their very own dinosaur designs.  We even emailed over to the teaching team a fact sheet and scale drawing of one dinosaur (Maiasaura), could the children work out from the drawing and fact sheet what Maiasaura ate?

Aimee Drew an “Apartesarrs”

A beautiful dinosaur drawing from Aimee.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

For dinosaur toys and games: Dinosaur Toys and Gifts.

Amazing Questions

Elm class (Year 2), had thought of some brilliant questions to ask and in the afternoon, we met up with the enthusiastic Reception class (Willow) and our dinosaur expert was introduced to Oliver – Willow’s resident dinosaur expert.

A very big thank you to the children for producing such a wonderful collection of dinosaur drawings and our thanks to the teaching team at Smallwood CofE Primary Academy for inviting Everything Dinosaur into the school.

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.