What I've been baking part 2

There is so much to do before moving, and so little time to do it. We leave in less than a month, and I just added ‘sell car’ to the to-do list. Yikes, that will certainly keep me busy. Today I plan on hitting the internet and figuring out how much to price my car at, but before I get going on that I thought I’d finish up the rest of my dino lesson!

My last post I talked about how the studnents went digging for dinosaur bones and then identified them. After they dug up the bones (that I made at home) they returned to their sand tubs and started digging for fossils (we learned about fossils the day before).



I think I see one! When the students began to see what looked like a fossil they switched over to their brush tool to uncover it the whole way, they didn’t want to accidentally break the fossil!



And there it is! When their fossil was completely uncovered they put it in their bucket with their bone and headed back to their seats. Once seated they drew a picture of their fossil in their dinosaur notebook, just like a real paleontologist would do. Then they had to make an educated quess as to what they had found a fossil of.



Want to know the best part of the whole fossil experience? They made the fossils themselves. They actually made them the day before after we finished talking about fossils.

I made the ‘dough’ the night before (recipie below) using coffee grounds that Starbucks kindly saved up for me. To save time I split the dough into pieces for each kid, made it into a round disk shape and then wrapped it in parchment paper and placed it in a ziplock baggie. Then I collected sticks, leaves, stones, shells, and made dinosaur foot print stamps out of potatoes. The next day the materials were all out on the table and the kids just had to pull out their parchment paper wrapped ‘dough’ open it up and start stamping/pressing. We found, due to the dark color of the fossil dough, that the bigger, thicker objects to make impressions with worked better, i.e. footprint stamps, sticks, rocks. The leaves and shells still made an impression, but they had to press really hard. When their fossil looked the way they wanted I wrote their name on the parchment paper their fossil was on so we knew who belonged to each one.

The only downside to this was that due to the coffee grounds and coffee in the fossil dough it smelled like coffee( bet you figured that out already). The kids didn’t love the smell, and one of the kids actually had to walk away and look at a dinosur book while we made his fossil for him. This would probably work better outside. If you think your students/kids might not like the coffee smell you could try using the dinosaur bone dough instead. I did like how dark these fossils came out though, and a little rough which made them seem more real. In fact, some of the kids thought they were!

Fossil Dough

1 cup of used coffee grounds
1/2 cup of cold coffee
1 cup of flour
1/2 cup of salt

Mix all the ingredients together and then form the dough into ½ inch thick circles. Stamp and decorate away. You can either let them sit out for 24 hours to dry, or pop them in the oven at 350* for 20 minutes.

Then you can share your fossil with everyone!

What I've been baking part 1

I haven't posted much lately because things have been a little crazy. I just finished my last term working on my masters in School Library Media, with the hope of being a school librarian. Oh yeah, and I'm moving to Houston in a month! Yikes!
Anyway, finishing up my last term of grad school meant three classes and a 'student teaching' experience in the local middle school's library. Obviously, this kept me pretty busy, but it hasn't kept me out of the kitchen entirely. Just look at what I cooked up for school:



Yes! That is what you're thinking (as long as your thinking it's a dinosaur bone)! I did a three day mini unit in the library with the life skills students on dinosaurs. It turned out pretty well, and the last day was the best. I created a dinosaur dig for the students to participate in. There were two parts and I'll share the first part today.

I created dinosaur bones the night before the dig. I made 9 bones in three different 'styles,' the recipie is at the end. The next day I buried them in tubs full of sand. After a discussion about what a Paleontologists is, and instructions on how to dig each student got their own tool kit (a bucket, shovel and paint brush), a fun nickname (at their request) my favorites were: fossil, sharkman, and, of course, the girl who picked Ms. Kelly as her nickname:), and a visor. Then we went to work!



The students used their shovels to dig until they found what they thought was a bone. Then they switched to their paintbrush so that they wouldn't damage the bones they found. The kids did a great job!



Once they completely uncovered their bones they took them to a table nearby where they had to use the picture to figure out which dinosaur their bone came from. Once they knew what dinosaur they found they drew a picture of the bone and the dino it was from in the dinosaur notebook which they had used each day to take notes in.



I had planned to keep the bones, but the students were so excited about their finds I ended up letting them take them home. The bones weren't hard to make, I used this simple recipie which you could use to make your own bones, or any clay figurine you want. I used the recipie here

Bread Dough Clay

2 C. Flour
1/2 C. Table Salt
3/4 C. Water

Mix the salt and flour together. Then make a well in the middle of the flour and slowly add the water. Mix it with a fork or your hands (I used my hands). Knead the mixture till it is not sticky but smooth. It should feel similiar to clay. If it is to dry add a little water at a time, and if it is too wet add a little flour. Theny go ahead and make your bones! Place them on a baking sheet and bake them at 300* for about an hour. Keep an eye on them, depending on their size will depend on how long it takes. They're done when they are hard and starting to brown on the bottom.

I hope you'll give this a try sometime, it would be great not only for a school lesson, but for a dinosaur birthday party too!

Ok, name that dinosaur: