Sleeping with the dinosaurs

Times Contributor  

 

Dinosaurs behind them, dinosaurs beside them, dinosaurs over them, dinosaurs everywhere! 

As part of the Social Studies and Science curriculum this year, the Grade 3 and 4 students from Standard School have been studying about different countries and where they are in the world, as well as rocks and minerals. The Grade 4 Social next year is about Alberta with a dinosaur theme. To give the students a good understanding of this the class went on a field trip to the Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller and participated in an overnight eduTour.

The students were joined by their friends from the Grades 4-6 classes from Rockyford School in this joint overnight trip. The students participated in a virtual hike (due to the inclement weather) as well as participated in four hands-on activities entitled Ancient Alberta Rocks, Fossil Casting, Raptors in Action, and Dinosaurs in Movies.

The program was jam packed with other fun things to do in Drumheller. The students and chaperones had an opportunity to swim at the Drumheller Aquaplex on the Wednesday, and Thursday they visited Reptile World. A huge and exciting experience by far was the opportunity to sleep under the dinosaurs at the Museum in the evening.

Some of the responses from the students are as follows: “The best was the Badlands Hike, it wasn’t a real hike because of the snow. We got to pick drivers to take us on the tour of Drumheller (they were crazy drivers, only pretend). I learned a lot about Drumheller that I didn’t know about before. There is a grain elevator and a coal mine, and many, many fossil castings of dinosaurs. I really liked the story about ‘Black Beauty’; her head was so big that they could only make a cast of it. We saw triceratops, pterodactyls and have course the Albertasaurus,” said nine year-old Houston Burrell. 

“The best thing about the Museum was fossil casting. You get to make a cast of a real fossil using the same filling cement like a dentist uses making mouth guards. Once they were done (cured), we got them back at the school and were able to paint them and take them home. Raptors in Action was really fun. We were split into groups and got ‘raptor legs’ with a claw at the end. We had to break through a piece of paper and then get out the elastic that was in the container. We raced against 6 other kids [it was kind of like playing a real game of Operation except we got to be the Raptors]. I want to go again and see everything that I missed seeing,” said Vickie Laerke, age 9.