Did dinosaurs sit on their eggs to keep them warm?!
 
A curious thought and one which we all enjoyed mulling over during the week. Dinosaur eggs, ostrich eggs, chicken's eggs and a small nest. Those items joined our circle this week.
 
Our parents are simply wonderful! In a timely manner one lovely mum brought in a bird's nest and we all got so much out of having it here. The children all concluded the nest would have been built by a small bird for a small bird and small chicks as it was so small! And as further proof they spotted a 'teeny weeny dip' in it  which would have fitted an egg.
 
We compared the size of eggs; we used an appropriately sized pom-pom to represent the egg that would have fitted in our nest. We then placed that next to the chicken's egg, and then the ostrich egg, and finally compared the size of our cut-out template of a dinosaur egg. This made us think about the thickness of the egg shell, and how it was related to the size of the bird / dinosaur in the egg. One girl postulated that if a tiny bird had the egg shell of an ostrich, it would have ended up living in the ostrich egg all their life as the shell was too thick to break through.
 
The dinosaur egg was 30cm tall and, my resident dinosaur expert, said it must have been from the Argentinosaurus or the Gigantosaurus. I suggested that in actual fact it is was the size of egg from a Titanosaurus and he corrected me, saying the name was simply 'Titanosaur'!

We learned how they laid several eggs at a time and one of the boys said 'I think they laid hundreds!' Which in their life-span and was spot on!

When I asked the question why so many eggs were laid at once and, how come not every egg hatched, one girl was quick to suggest that the eggs were eaten by other dinosaurs. 
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There ensued conversations of how do we like to eat our eggs...
'Dippy eggs.' 
' I like it fried so it is really crispy.' 
'I like scrambled eggs.' 
'I like the yolk being hard.' 
'I like egg mayo.' 
 'I like eggs made from chocolate.' No disagreement there! She won that debate!

We happily and enthusiastically delved into the world of dinosaurs!  
This is the brown part of the timeline which we are exploring for two weeks. 
It was stimulating, fascinating and fun conversation as we named each of the dinosaurs and then grouped them into carnivores and herbivores. And this is what we found out...

Stegosaurus had a really small brain for his size. One boy said 'but he is a bit clever because he has plates so Tyrannosaurus-Rex can't bite him.'

We debated which of the dinosaurs was the biggest and there ensued a tete a tete between 2 boys, one of whom claimed it was Tyrannosaurus-Rex and the other who absolutely wouldn't hear of it and was firm in his belief that it was Argentinosaurus! I was compelled to look this up and it just so happened that it was Argentinosaurus (although we discovered also that the aptly named Gigantosaurus beat them both!). 
We also found out that female T-Rexes were bigger than male T-Rexes. Hmm...
I asked 'I wonder why the females are bigger? What do you think?'  
One boy suggested, 'I think because the females probably slept more.'! 

More dinosaurs next week!

It's official! 

Absolutely thrilled and delighted to proclaim from the highest hill tops and mountains...  

We are Outstanding!!  
Well, we kind of knew we were but Ofsted think so too... again! :-) 

Many thanks to each and everyone of you who forms part of our gorgeous little Montessori community. You all make the place fun,  delightful and purposeful. Especially the children! Many thanks. xx

Here is the link to the report.
http://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/index.php?q=filedownloading/&id=2656137&type=1&refer=0

​It has been a wonderful week of measuring, comparing and filling our stomachs! 
The children were shown two fossils; a trilobite and a Megalodon shark tooth. This was our week of thinking about life in the oceans from the first life of single cell creatures to the evolution of much bigger sea life. 
The Ammonite fossil was passed around and children remarked on its small size. We talked about what a fossils are and how they were formed; how over time the hard parts of the ammonite were embedded in the rock. 
One child said 'So we dig them up like dinosaur bones?' 
We thought about the size of the trilobite and how small life had been in the seas;  one girl had been to the science museum and brought in a cuddly e-coli and this tied in well to our discussion as we thought about size of the e-coli bacteria living in our intestines. 
We compared small sea life to the Megladon shark – one of the biggest sharks to have ever lived. The Megladon grew up to 18m; we got the tape measure out and measured each child – each child was on average 1 metre tall. So the children lay, in the classroom, head to toe as 1 metre measures and we only got to 9 before we had run out of space and that is ONLY half the length of the Megladon shark! The children all got to pass the tooth of a Megladon shark around the circle. It was 7cm in length and we all agreed that we would not like to swim in the sea and meet one! 

On Tuesday we made pancakes. We thought about where the ingredients came from; this made us think about wheat and what food grows up from the ground, what grows under ground and what food we pick from trees. 
The best part was pouring maple syrup on our pancakes and eating them!