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Welcome to our “Blast to the Past: An Amazing Prehistoric Plants Week” – an at home week filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to the oh-so-cool, but often overlooked, awesome prehistoric plants! We have definitely had weeks devoted to the prehistoric themes, like the extremely popular and beloved dinosaurs our – Digging Up Dinosaur Discoveries Week, as well as the equally awe-inspiring but slightly less known Prehistoric Sea Creatures in our Amazing Prehistoric Sea Creatures – Stunning Sea Monsters Week! But for this week, we wanted to bring some attention to what many kids think of as an afterthought – prehistoric plants!
Like most of our at home camp weeks, we kicked off the week by easing into the topic. We started off with setting up the camp area with some plant themed backdrops as well as some images of ferns and cycads – though our backdrop wasn’t 100% accurate, it still helped set the mood 😉 And, like all days, we added in some interesting books and some writing / storytelling prompts to keep them learning! Read on to check out the fun!
INTRO
Many little ones and younger kids may think of plants as simply the “food for herbivores’ or backdrops to the ‘cooler’ dinosaurs, but prehistoric plants can tell quite a bit about the era that they lived and thrived in – giving us a more complete picture of the world at that time.
We started off with a timeline of the eras, so that the kids could wrap their heads around the time periods (and when they’re favorite dinosaurs or prehistoric creatures came into the mix). This helped give them some reference points.
These sites are also great resources with pages on history, concepts, and activities:
Once they’ve gotten the idea of the time periods we’d be focusing on, then it was off to setting up the learning area – always a fun activity – and then reading, writing, crafting, and experiments!
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
Decorating the ‘Camp Area’ or the room / area of your house where you’ll have most of your activities is a great way to get the kids excited about the theme of the week! If they’re incredibly crafty and creative, having some extra and opened-ended crafts would be great to keep them engaged. Otherwise, a prepared activity would work well!
We did plan to start the week at some of the earliest plants (which actually did not look like the plants we know and love today), but we still decorated the area with lots of greens and leaves! We brought out our Green Leaves Backdrop as well as some of our fake plants (Floral Garden Ferns, Artificial Greenery).
For crafts, we set up some rocks with moss(floral moss). Then we created some ‘plant fossils’ using some of our fake plants & play doh!
WEEKLONG PROJECT
At the start of the week, we also introduce a weeklong project – this is great for reinforcing concepts learned throughout the day as well as allowing them to build time and project management skills.
For our weeklong project, we gave them a ‘Field Journal’ to draw and add plants from each prehistoric era.
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Here are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- Plants Are Cool, Too! Episode 2 : Fossilized Forests! By PlantsAreCoolToo (15m)
- Meet a Paleobotanist by Sam Noble Museum (3m)
- Paleobotany Spotlight: Time Traveling with Wyoming’s Plant Fossils by University of Wyoming (3m)
- World’s Oldest Fossilized Forest Unearthed in NY by Binghamton University (5m)
- Discovery Day: National Fossil Day — Virtual Tour of the KU Paleobotany Collection by KU Natural History Museum (5m)
- Fossil Plants: Survivors from Deep Time – with Susannah Lydon by The Paleontological Association (4m)
READING
It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:
- When Plants Took Over the Planet by Dr. Chris Thorogood
- Fossils for Kids by Ashley Hall. This book dedicates a chapter (Chapter 5) to just plants. In these few pages, there’s a description of the types of plants that formed , how plant fossils form, why plant fossils are rare, and what prehistoric plants still exist today.
- A History of Plants in Fifty Fossils by Paul Kenrick
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: PREHISTORIC PLANTS, PALEOBOTANY, FOSSIL
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- There are many, many cartoons and movies about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. Create a short comic or story about a prehistoric plant!
- If you could be a paleobotanist, what do you think would be the most fun part of your job? Write a short story about a day filled with those fun moments!
THANK YOU
Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other prehistoric weeks: Digging Up Dinosaur Discoveries Week and Amazing Prehistoric Sea Creatures – Stunning Sea Monsters Week, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
