Materials
Large playground area Ball of string, twine or yarn
Yardstick, meter stick or tape measure
Instructions
1. Read the children a book that tells the length of different dinosaurs.
2. Ask the children to estimate which dinosaur was the biggest. Write down their hypotheses or make a graph showing a variety of dinosaurs and ask the children to mark the dinosaur that they think is the biggest.
3. Tell the children that today they are going to find out how big dinosaurs really were. Take the children out on the playground.
4. Ask one child to stand at the point from which the measuring will begin and hold one end of the string. Other children help measure while others unwind the string. With the yard or meter stick, measure where to cut off the string, depending on the type of dinosaur you aremeasuring.
5. When the string is laid out the entire length of the dinosaur, let the children stand or lie down alongside the string and count how many children it takes to make up the length of this dinosaur. Then let the children take turns standing at one end and walking heel to toe, counting how many of their foot lengths the dinosaur measures. Ask them if there are other ways to measure the length and let them try out their ideas.
6. Ask the children to brainstorm about objects they know of that are as long as this dinosaur ("it's as big as our car" etc.).
7. Write down the measurement.
8. Repeat steps 5 to 8 for different dinosaurs.
9. With the children, check your original hypothesis against the measurements. Discuss similarities and differences.
10. Write down a dictated statement from each child about what they learned about dinosaurs and/or about measurement with this experiment.More to doArt: Ask the children to draw or make clay models of two dinosaurs, showing the difference in sizes.
