Dinosaurs are every students fascination. Reproducible, hands-on activities give students the opportunity to experience how the scientific process works and how scientists form and test conclusions. Students build and employ skills in analysis, drawing, measuring, graphing, and arithmetic; exercise research and library skills to acquire data necessary to complete the activities; and apply critical-thinking skills to extrapolate from the known to the unknown-the fundamental process that makes science work. Grades 4-12.

This teacher's guide has classroom-ready, student-tested activities with explanations of the science behind them. Projects are designed to increase student awareness and understanding of the investigative process. Students apply investigation skills to a variety of dinosaur-based inquiries.

An investigation of the work and workers in fossil preparation labs reveals the often unacknowledged creativity and problem-solving on which scientists rely. Those awe-inspiring dinosaur skeletons on display in museums do not spring fully assembled from the earth. Technicians known as preparators have painstakingly removed the fossils from rock, repaired broken bones, and reconstructed missing pieces to create them. These specimens are foundational evidence for paleontologists, and yet the work and workers in fossil preparation labs go largely unacknowledged in publications and specimen records. In this book, Caitlin Wylie investigates the skilled labor of fossil preparators and argues for a new model of science that includes all research work and workers. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, Wylie shows that the everyday work of fossil preparation requires creativity, problem-solving, and craft. She finds that preparators privilege their own skills over technology and that scientists prefer to rely on these trusted technicians rather than new technologies. Wylie examines how fossil preparators decide what fossils, and therefore dinosaurs, look like; how labor relations between interdependent yet hierarchically unequal collaborators influence scientific practice; how some museums display preparators at work behind glass, as if they were another exhibit; and how these workers learn their skills without formal training or scientific credentials. The work of preparing specimens is a crucial component of scientific research, although it leaves few written traces. Wylie argues that the paleontology research community's social structure demonstrates how other sciences might incorporate non-scientists into research work, empowering and educating both scientists and nonscientists.

Teaching science to young children has long been an area of intense interest and concern to educators. Investigating Science with Young Children is specifically designed to address this concern in a practical, timely, and enjoyable way. Originally planned as an extension of the ten-booklet series, Science Experiences for Young Children (Teachers College Press, 1975), this book outlines 85 lively activities the teacher can use in guiding three-, four-, and five-year-olds in a fruitful exploration of science. The first part of the book presents a theoretical explanation of the process approach advocated by the author; the second, the activities themselves: Exploring Water, Mixing Colors, Setting Objects in Motion, to name a few. Investigating Science with Young Children offers an informed guide to resources necessary to implement an effective and productive science program. The book will help teachers fully understand the process approach and encourage them to develop their own science activities for the classroom. As the author states, “It is not enough to read about process science; you must use it to find out how much children enjoy and learn from this method.” This book will serve as a supplemental text for early childhood and primary science curriculum courses and as an invaluable resource for teachers. “There is much of value here.” —School Science & Mathematics “Teaching science by a process approach is an exciting adventure for both teachers and children. There is neither a predetermined sequence of events for children nor a specific set of directions for the teacher. Process science is an open-ended approach, and the direction learning will take is determined, for the most part, by the children.” —From the Preface