Fossil Fun

This week was our district's "Eye on Science" week where we all do some really fun science activities. Second grade decided to do Earth's Materials with an emphasis on fossils. Here were some of our fun fossil activities.


First we did a gallery walk around the classroom to spark their interest. Each table was covered with a piece of butcher paper and different photographs pertaining to fossils.

The kids had two minutes at each table to write down anything on the paper that came to mind when they looked at the pictures. This included thoughts, questions, and really anything they thought of. 

I got this idea from Reagan at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. (I'm so sorry- for some reason I can't find the exact post...?) The kids loved getting up and moving around, and it sparked some great discussions between them about fossils. It certainly worked in getting the kids interested in fossils!


Then, we talked about paleontologists and their job. We borrowed Courtney Bartlett from Swimming Through Second's "Pete the Paleontologist" activity. You can find it here.

After watching a BrainPop video on fossils, we were ready to make our own fossils! Here's how we did it!


Here's everything we needed:

A little messy, but super fun!

Even more messy, and even more fun!

One of the sweetest things happened during this whole "paleontologist dig." One of my student's fossils broke :-(

She was so sad that it broke, and was sitting quietly at her desk crying. One of my little gentleman saw this, and decided he was going to give his fossil to her. He found a Sharpie, crossed his name off of his fossil and wrote Taliya's name. It was hers now.

Talk about a huge heart! This unprompted little act of kindness (from a seven year old!) just made my day! Sometimes I wish adults could be just as thoughtful as kids are at times. 


I am going to attempt to link more detailed directions to making the fossils here. (Fingers crossed). Let me know if it doesn't work and I can always email the directions to you! :)


Hope you're having a GREAT weekend!!!