INTRODUCING GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION TO KINDERGARTEN THROUGH SECOND GRADE STUDENTS VIA A PALEONTOLOGY ENRICHMENT COURSE

An eight-week, after-school enrichment course on paleontology introduced geoscience education to elementary school students in Redmond, WA, in fall 2022. The course, entitled “Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Other Fossils,” enrolled nine demographically diverse students from kindergarten through second grade. We incorporated our knowledge and skills as a paleontologist (PHK) and a librarian with a specialization in art (KLK) to offer a course with geoscience and art components.

Through hands-on activities, we introduced such geoscience concepts as the rock cycle, fossil preservation, geologic time, and stratigraphic correlation (4 weeks). For example, a course-long taphonomy experiment, in which each week the students exhumed food items they had buried the first week, allowed them to understand decay and the preservation process. The second part of the course focused on dinosaurs, other Mesozoic fossils, and Plio-Pleistocene fossils using PHK’s personal collections. For instance, a set of skulls and jaws helped students determine the characteristics of herbivores and carnivores; making trackways by walking across butcher paper in wet socks illustrated different modes and speeds of dinosaur locomotion. Art activities enhanced the learning process, e.g., making clay molds of brachiopod fossils, creating dinosaur puppets, and sculpting dinosaurs from Play-Doh.

The greatest challenge was posed by the different skill levels of the participants. Kindergartners lacked the reading skills of older students, limiting the degree to which activities involving reading could be used. The course was sponsored by the Parent Teacher Student Association and school resources such as PowerPoint projectors and white boards were unavailable for use. Teaching the course late in the day also meant that students’ attention spans were decreased, so flexibility was required in the activities planned for each day. Nevertheless, we were able to instill an appreciation of the geosciences and an interest in STEAM that we expect will continue. Enrichment activities represent a viable option for introducing students to geoscience concepts that are not covered in the K12 classroom.