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Earth History, Timelines, and Layers in the Earth
Miller Heights Elementary
School, Academic Year 2011-2012
Grade K |
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Dr. DeLeo came into our classroom
and told us about a special program for the entire school.
He called it “Timeline: Planet Earth!” We knew that
something was going on because there is a giant painting in the older kid's hallway! |
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There are also two big rock displays, and one of them is by the library. He told us about some of the things going on in other classes:
for example, first graders are studying rocks, and
third graders are studying magnets. There is even
a weather station on the roof of the school. |
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| Dr. DeLeo used a computer and a projector in our classroom, and he even showed movies! We asked a lot of questions! He began the computer slide show by describing "timelines" to us. A timeline is like a clock, only instead of a circle, it is a line. He reminded us that a line that goes from left to right is called a "horizontal" line! |
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| These pictures show timelines for a day in school - the one in the middle for morning (AM) Kindergarten, and the one on the far right for afternoon (PM) Kindergarten. |
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In order to make sure that we really understood the timeline, Dr. DeLeo asked us to point to places on the timeline that were not labeled. For example, he asked us to point to where we would brush our teeth before going to bed. We knew that we should point to a spot just before bedtime, and not after we went to bed. Nobody brushes their teeth while they are in bed sleeping! |
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| If you click the play button on the picture just to the left, you will see a VIDEO of one of us explaining where on the timeline we do Center Time. |
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You might call a clock a "time circle" instead of a timeline. The numbers go around in a circle on a clock, as shown below on the left, but they go in a straight line on a timeline. A timeline that goes longer than one day is more like a calendar than a clock. You can string seven days together to make a week. In fact, a calendar is just one-week timelines, placed one on top of another! |
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| Dr. DeLeo showed us a timeline labeled by the letters J F M A M J J A S O N D, as shown on the far left. We figured out that these were the first letters of the twelve months in a year, January, February, ... This is a timeline for one year! Click the play button on the photo to the left to see a VIDEO of one of us explaining this to the class. |
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It's fun to make timelines using photos or drawings. The timeline to the right shows Dr. DeLeo's life in photos and drawings. Can you make a timeline of your life? |
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| Dr. DeLeo gave us each a paper with three boxes so we could make a timeline for one of our school days. The first box shows us going to school. The second box is us having dinner. And the third box is us going to bed. |
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The timeline for human life on Earth is a lot longer than the timeline for Dr. DeLeo's life, and the timeline for planet Earth is much, much longer than that! |
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| To the right are some timelines that cover many, many years! The one just to the right is for 20,000 years, and the one on the far right is for the age of the Earth, over four billion years! With these pictures, Dr. DeLeo was getting us ready to see a gigantic timeline painting, painted by a real artist. It shows the history of the Earth from the time it was formed, right up to now! |
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This amazing timeline painting is hung on the wall on the other side of the school - the side with the older kids. Dr. DeLeo and our teacher walked us over to the big timeline painting, and he explained it to us. At the left end of the painting, we see what the Earth was like a long time ago. As we move toward the other end of the painting, we get closer to what we see on the Earth today. On this scale, one foot is about 100 million years! |
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We walked along the timeline painting from left to right.
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| The left side of the timeline shows the beginning of the Earth, when it was being hit by rocks from space, and was covered with lava. As the Earth began to cool, steam started to turn into water, filling lakes and oceans. |
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It took a long time - billions of years - but eventually life formed on the Earth. The dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago. We already knew that there were
dinosaurs and other animals on the Earth a long time
ago that are no longer around today. Many of us even
knew what the word “extinct” means. It means
that those plants or animals no longer live today –
they all died. That might seem like a long time ago, but it really isn't when you compare it to the age of the Earth. Most of the animals that are alive today are only a few inches from the end of the painting. Dr. DeLeo told us that all of human history would fit in the last thousandth of an inch on the right side of the painting.
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Dr. DeLeo said that our questions and answers were so good that we could be teachers. So, he gave some of us a chance to explain what was happening on the timeline painting. Below are some photos of us as we practiced being a teacher. It is harder than it looks! |
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Dr. DeLeo told
us that we could tell a lot about what happened in the
past by digging underground. We learned that the Earth’s
surface is made of layers of dirt. The deepest layers
are the oldest because they were laid down first. This
is just like making a sand bottle using layers of colored
sand. The bottom layer goes in first. We knew that –
we’re really smart!! So, if you dig down deep into
the Earth, you are actually looking back in time. Often,
we don’t need to dig since nature sometimes carves
away the ground for us. You can often see the layers easily.
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We find the remains of plants and animals (fossils) in
the ground. And the ones that lived a really long time
ago leave fossils really deep underground. A trilobite fossil would be very deep, but a kitty cat fossil would be near the surface. |
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Dr. DeLeo told us that, with the help of our teachers, we would be making our own sand bottles. He also gave us enough sand to fill a big display case. Each time we added a layer of sand, we would bury an object connected with that time of the year. |
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Dr. DeLeo started us off by burying a little clay Halloween pumpkin in a brown layer of sand. He did this during the morning class. A photo is shown below on the left. After that, he placed the wishbone from a Thanksgiving turkey in the next layer, which was yellow. This is shown below in the middle and right photos. Of course the pumpkin went in before the wishbone, because Halloween comes before Thanksgiving! This is just like it would happen on Earth!
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We had lots of fun learning about timelines and layers
in the Earth! We can't wait until Dr. DeLeo comes back with fossils!
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I hope you have enjoyed this web presentation as much as we enjoyed sharing the actual learning experience with your son or daughter. Although we have endeavored to exclude photographs where permission has been denied, it is possible for errors to occur. If you would like us to remove a photograph of your son or daughter for any reason, please send me an e-mail message at lgd0@lehigh.edu or call me at 610-758-3413, and we will remove it promptly. Please note that we will never associate a child's full or last name with a photograph except in circumstances where special permission was explicitly provided. Thank you. Gary DeLeo. |
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