My students dug through the lowest stratum in their simulated archaeological sites this afternoon. This was their final rotation: one last child being the excavator, one the map maker, one the cataloguer, one the museum curator. In the sandy bottom layer they discovered sharks teeth and shells from a Miocene sea.
"Now I know why you're wearing those earrings!" announced a child in each of my three groups when they uncovered a shark's tooth.
Some of them admired my t-shirt, which I love for its images. The grammar, I find painful: plural subject, singular verb. But what a great illustration of the strata that lie beneath our feet! And of what may come next...I made these earrings years ago with a class of 7th graders after we returned from a geology/history trip to Stratford Hall on the Northern Neck of Virginia. We spent an hour or two looking for fossils along the Potomac--sharks' teeth, ray dental plates, Miocene whale bones, sand dollars, and scallop shells. Most of us found a few sharks' teeth and brought them home. After identifying them, many of my students strung them on necklaces. I made earrings.
I feel like I've reached a milestone: 66 days of earrings, leaving me with 299 to go. I've broken the 300 barrier!
1 comment:
Those lucky kids, each perhaps finding a datum in the stratum!
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