The Great Lessons, Lesson 2: The Coming of Life: Part 2

Doodle continued working with his art history timeline. 

In our second week of covering Lesson 2, Doodle reviewed insect metamorphosis using the free ladybug life cycle cards from Montessori Print Shop. For some reason the adult insect didn't print properly. :(

He continued using the five big major extinction events cards and added the five major ice ages that I made.

Using both the free set and the $1.99 set from Montessori Print Shop, Doodle looked at dinosaurs. 

He also wrote a paragraph on three different dinosaurs that he chose from the cards. The goal was to include all the facts on the card and three things from online research that he thought were interesting or important. Here is one of the three:

Archaeopteryx is a member of the family Archaeopterygidae. It was named by Hermann von Meyer in 1861. Its name means ancient feather or wing. A total of eleven Archaeopteryx specimens have been found plus a feather. Although it had feathers and could fly, it had similarities to dinosaurs, including its teeth, skull, lack of a horny bill, and some bone structures. Paleontologists view Archaeopteryx as a transition between dinosaurs and modern birds. This early bird lived in the late Jurassic period about one hundred fifty million years ago and was about one foot long and weighed eleven to eighteen ounces. Archaeopteryx is the oldest-known fossil animal that is generally accepted as a bird.     

We looked at our prehistoric marine life posters.

Be careful! The fossils will chew on your head.

We watched two free DVDs from HHMI- The Day the Mesozoic Died and The Origin of Species.

He also read a little in A Really Short History of Nearly Everything, and I finished our Timeline of Life and will write a separate post about what went into making it.