Age: 7.25 & 10
Science Co-Op Session 3 Week 2: Timeline of Life, Reptiles
Agenda:
- Story on reptiles
- Reptil Worksheet
Ahhh, winter. I feel so unmotivated to prep. Every week I’m thankful that neither Fleur nor Eclectic Mama has any expectations for the class.
This week we were supposed to study amphibians by dissecting a frog. But one student isn’t here. So instead we had a super laid back class. Just as well because this week the children, especially Astroboy, are crazy.
Before I go on, I want to reiterate again how much I love the Montessori curriculum. It was only till I took my training class that I realized each animal kind of evolved from the previous type (fish->amphibian->reptile->birds->mammal), because of the history of the Earth! Yes, I know that’s a super over-simplification that isn’t quite right. But my point is that the different vertebrates are related to each other. It is all about the inter-connectedness of things.
So, much like last week, we started with a made up story of reptiles so I can hit all the major points they will fill out on the worksheet. The children went a little crazy drawing unrelated things on the poster, but they had fun. I need to think about how to better manage the class because a fun class doesn’t mean they’ve actually learned.
In Chinese:
Once upon a time, there was a little snake named Pudding. One day he decided he was very hungry and needed to find something to eat. But after crawing for a bit, he came upon a rock. He decided to sunbathe on the rock since he was very cold, because he’s cold-blooded. After he warmed up, he continued crawling until he saw a napping mouse. Quick, before the mouse wakes, he strangles it with his whole body and then devoured it……
The snack eventually met another reptile (turtle), defended himself against some birds, and laid eggs.
Can you spot some reptiles??
Next, we went over the worksheet one category at a time and filled it out. When the kids couldn’t remember, I could remind them of the story we just heard and ask them what happened. This took us to 11:45 or so, and by then the kids were ready to go, so I let them go.
My dinosaur obsessed son:
His animal on his worksheet is a 地震龍, which he thought was the largest dinosaur. But we checked Google when he came home and discovered it wasn’t. Instead it’s the Patagotitan mayorum, otherwise known as Patagotitan or 巴塔哥尼亞泰坦龍. After we looked that up, I left him to watch a 45 min Discovery channel video on dinosaurs while I take a nap.
Then he went to our bookshelf and pulled out this dinosaur book, 圖解恐龍小百科, all by himself. It’s his bedtime reading. I don’t normally love Yow Fu Culture books, but they do these sort of encyclopedias very well.
The reason I’m having the kids filling out the same worksheet is to show the needs of these animals similar to the Montessori Needs of Humans presentation. Hoping they will see that all animals need food, shelter, reproduce, etc.
Vocabulary －
Every week, I ask Eclectic Mama again how to say herbivore, carnivore, omnivore in Chinese. So hard to remember!
- Reptiles – 爬行類 (newer)，爬蟲類 (older version)
- herbivore － 草食性動物
- carnivore － 肉食性動物
- omnivore － 雜食性動物
- cold-blooded – 冷血動物
- Patagotitan mayorum – 巴塔哥尼亞泰坦龍