The DINOSAURS AT LARGE programme content is especially developed for the New Zealand Curriculum. It is uniquely designed to link the children’s work and studies to a central learning experience.
The Dinosaur theme brings relevance to the key learning areas across all elementary grades to ensure students gain absolute value from their participation in the presentation.
The Dinosaur at Large experience gives students a unique perspective which links modern and pre-historic times to the current issues of environmental awareness, climate change, global warming, extinction, and sustainability.
With over 100 educational worksheets, Dinosaur At Large is an ideal foundation for future classroom lessons and activities.
The program works within the following strands of the broad areas of learning during the presentation, and encourages students to learn and interact during the session in the following way.
By the end of the session, the students will have
- Explored dinosaurs as real animals that once walked on the Earth a very long time ago, in much the same way as animals do today.
- Learned that dinosaurs came in all shapes and sizes and that these different body types allowed them to survive in a variety of different environments and times.
- Discovered that dinosaurs were not the only type of animal to live long ago, that other animals like reptiles, insects, fish, mammals etc. lived then as well, including animals that are still around today.
- Seen that dinosaurs were divided into several very distinctive groups where different types of animals in the group acted and looked similar.
- Learned that dinosaurs came in a vast variety of sizes, from chicken size to “four storey building” size, and that these sizes enabled them to eat different foods.
- Explored the differences between meat-eaters and plant-eaters, how each feeds itself and how they were similar to animals of today.
- Discussed how scientists find out extra information about extinct animals through looking at their footprints, eggs, skin prints and environment.
- Explored the fact that paleontologists can work out what the whole animal probably looked like from just a few bones by comparing them to animals that have similar bones, and that they can try the same activity at home with a chicken.