Q. What is over forty feet long, and over twenty feet tall, and weighs over six tons?
A. The imagination of your average kindergartner.
This week, our kindergarten class took a trip to the Sternberg Museum, as part of their annual dinosaur unit. For the last several weeks, they have been reading about dinosaurs, writing about dinosaurs, drawing dinosaurs, coloring dinosaurs, and generally living dinosaurs.
But it wasn’t until they were in the shadow of the life-sized, moving, breathing, growling Tyrannosaurus Rex animatronic model at the Sternberg, that they truly understood dinosaurs. It may have only been a robotic model, but the students’ imaginations made the experience almost real.
They began their tour of the Hays museum learning about the life and work of Robert J. Sternberg in the chalk flats of Gove County. They sat in front of his most famous find, the “fish within the fish.” They watched a movie about how the fossil was brought to the museum and prepared for display. They learned about what a historic find it was for Sternberg, and for Kansas.
Then these little archeologists made their way up the ramp to the upper exhibits, into a chamber made to look like the depths of a prehistoric ocean. There, in a full color, was a model of the very same fish whose bones they had just seen. The artists’ rendition of flesh, skin, and teeth, gave them plenty to imagine. They walked warily past, and you could sense the tension as many of them focused on the fierce jaws on this underwater predator.
Up the ramp, the tour guide told use that we were entering Colorado, and the kindergarten students all pointed out the line painted on the floor with the certainty that they were indeed entering a new state.
Up on “land,” our first encounter was with a herd of herbivores. We walked between a mother and her calf, each with noise and movement. These moving models were impressive enough, and I could see the kindergarteners imagining these animals looking at them as they passed.
Then we came to the main attraction, the biggest, baddest dino of them all: T-Rex. When he bellowed and turned his neck to look at the class, many them were imagination overdrive. They huddled around their teachers for protection, and when the brief show was over, they laughed nervously in their newfound comprehension of the awesome size and power of the lizard king.
The kindergartners then went to the Discovery room, where they listened to a scientist who showed them a variety of animals up close and personal. There were grasshopper mice, jumping and tumbling in their small cage. There was a bat that actually took flight in the room and hid under a bookcase. And finally, there was a long bull snake the kids could actually touch.
In my perspective, the reaction to the real animals paled in comparison to the response of the students’ imaginations in the presence of the dinosaur models. Maybe it was the fact that these students had been learning about dinosaurs for so long. They had colored so many pictures and read so many books. To finally see a life-sized model of a dinosaur, while not real, allowed their imaginations to take them to a long ago place where the dinosaurs ruled the earth.
I would like to thank our superintendent, Jim Hickel, for driving the bus. We can only teach so much in a classroom. Sometimes, it takes a field trip to create a lasting learning experience that starts in the imagination and finds a home in the long-term memory.
I doubt any of these students will ever forget the first time they saw the T-Rex move. That is the power of the Kindergarten imagination.
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