All about dinosaurs, fossils and prehistoric animals by Everything Dinosaur team members.
11 10, 2015

Dinosaurs Inspire Handwriting

By | October 11th, 2015|General Teaching, Key Stage 1/2|Comments Off on Dinosaurs Inspire Handwriting

Dinosaurs Inspire Handwriting

Following a dinosaur workshop with Lower Key Stage 1 children at a Nottinghamshire school, Everything Dinosaur’s fossil expert was asked to provide some extension ideas to help the teaching team keep the children motivated when it came to their writing.  Our expert suggested a number of activities and once back in the office, further supplementary resources and other support materials were emailed over to assist the teachers and the teaching assistants with their dinosaur themed term topic.

Dinosaurs Inspire Handwriting

Dinosaurs Inspire Handwriting

Dinosaur workshop thank you letter.

Dinosaur workshop thank you letter. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Thank You Letters

One of our suggested extension activities was to challenge the children to write us a thank you letter.  Could they include a statement in their letter telling us about their favourite part of the dinosaur workshop?  Could they use capitals and punctuation?  We received some really well crafted and well written thank you letters, a most impressive effort.  Well done to all.

Team members at Everything Dinosaur enjoyed reading all the thank you letters.  It was a case of dinosaurs inspire handwriting as a result of the dinosaur themed workshop at the school.

For further information about Everything Dinosaur’s work in schools: Email Everything Dinosaur.

To read testimonials from teachers, teaching assistants and members of the senior leadership team who have had visits from Everything Dinosaur to conduct fossil and dinosaur workshops or purchased items from Everything Dinosaur: Everything Dinosaur Testimonials.

All the Children in the Class Took Part in the Letter Writing Extension Activity

A set of thank you letters from a class.

Pupils sent in thank you letters to Everything Dinosaur. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Everything Dinosaur

A spokesperson from Everything Dinosaur commented that team members liked to provide additional support to teachers and teaching assistants by proposing lots of extension activities after a dinosaur workshop.

Everything Dinosaur stocks a huge range of prehistoric animal and dinosaur themed toys and games. To visit Everything Dinosaur’s user-friendly and award-winning website: Visit Everything Dinosaur.

11 10, 2015

Celebrating Earth Science Week Top 100 Geology Locations

By | October 11th, 2015|Geology, Main Page|0 Comments

Top One Hundred Sites Related to Geology UK and Ireland

In celebration of Earth Science week, an annual commemoration of the contribution to geology made by the British Isles (UK and Ireland), the London-based British Geological Society have published the results of a survey to find the most popular geology related sites from the United Kingdom and Ireland.  The wide ranging and eclectic list demonstrates the incredible variety of the geology of these islands, which are regarded as the birthplace of the science of geology.  After all, the Geological Society, which was founded in 1807, is the oldest geological society in the world.

British Geology

The chart-topping locations were compiled from over four hundred public nominations, divided into ten categories which include landscape, historical and scientific importance, human habitation, industrial and economic importance, educational, coastal, folding and faulting, outcrops, adventurous and fire and ice.

Voted Number One in the Poll

Voted number one in the British Geological Society Survey.

Voted number one in the British Geological Society Survey.

Picture credit: British Geological Survey

The picture above shows the bizarre and spectacular rocky mountains, sculpted by deep time and ravages of the Ice Ages.  These are the Foreland Mountains of Assynt.

Sites from Across the British Isles

Around thirty of the top one hundred (including four in the top ten) come from Scotland.  Wales contributes ten, a surprise given the beauty of Wales form the rugged peaks of Snowdonia, the amazing coastline and the rich diversity of fossils found in the country.  Northern Ireland has five and like Wales, it has none in the top ten as voted for by members of the public.  Ireland fares slightly better with a total of nine.  The rest of the locations can be found in England (the other six in the top ten are to be found in England).

The range includes The Channel Tunnel (24), the building home to the Natural History Museum (39), the Geevor Tin Mine in Cornwall (23).  Also included are a number of locations that team members at Everything Dinosaur are very fond of, these locations have been the destination of choice for geology field trips for generations, places such as Wrens Nest (42), the Laxford Brae road section in northern Scotland (38) and South Stack Formation on the island of Anglesey (85).

Wrens Nest Features in the Top One Hundred

Amazing geological feature.

Amazing geological feature.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The picture above shows the fantastic ripple beds preserved in the limestone of the Wrens Nest nature reserve (Dudley, West Midlands).

Favourite British Geology

The Top Ten Locations – “The People’s Favourites”

  1. The Foreland Mountains Assynt (Sutherland, Scotland) with its breath-taking isolated mountains (see picture in this article).
  2. Ironbridge Gorge (Shropshire) regarded as the birth place of the industrial revolution.
  3. Siccar Point (Scotland) the site of a world famous unconformity where the junction between the older, tilted layers of greyish sandstone and the younger Old Red Sandstone can be clearly made out.
  4. The Rotunda Museum (North Yorkshire) built to a design suggested by William Smith regarded by many as the “father of geology”.
  5. Staffa – the basaltic columns to be found on this island that forms part of the Inner Hebrides.
  6. Stonehenge, located in Wiltshire.
  7. Hunstanton Cliffs – highly fossiliferous cliffs on the Norfolk coast where the red limestone contrasts sharply with the overlying chalk.
  8. The Craster Coastline, with its unusual geology and notable outcrops.
  9. Millook Haven which runs from North Cornwall into Devon showing spectacular folds of inter-bedded sandstones and shales.
  10. Glencoe (Scotland), the remnants of a long extinct super volcano.

From a fossil collecting and fossil observation perspective, a number of other sites are also included notably the beaches of Lyme Regis (44), Kimmeridge Bay (20) and the dinosaur footprints preserved in the Bendrick rocks (south Wales – number 45).

Lyme Regis (Number Forty-Five)

Good idea to go fossil collecting on a falling tide and to keep away from the steep cliffs.

The beaches at Lyme Regis such as Monmouth Beach make the list.  Lyme Regis made it into the list of favourite British geology.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Everything Dinosaur stocks a wide range of models of iconic animals known from the British fossil record including many dinosaurs: Dinosaur Models and Prehistoric Animal Figures.

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