Year 1 went on a visit to the Horniman Museum to see the amazing exhibition, Dinosaurs: Monster Families. As the boys are learning about dinosaurs for their topic, they wanted to find answers to the questions: Were dinosaurs good parents? How did they look after their eggs, nests and babies?
We learnt that the Oviraptor has been misnamed. Scientists first thought it was a dangerous carnivore because its remains were found on top of a nest of eggs. The boys now know that the eggs actually belonged to the Oviraptor and that it died guarding its nest!
We were lucky enough to see the famous ‘Baby Louie’, a near-complete skeleton of a dinosaur hatchling. The boys became palaeontologists, re-assembling a large dinosaur leg bone, and gently digging in the sand for bones.
The visit concluded with a walk through the Horniman’s Prehistoric Garden which includes some of the oldest types of plants on earth. The boys were able to see the plants and trees that grew at the time of the dinosaurs and spotted the Wollemi pine which has existed for 90 million years! We returned to school having learnt something new and full of enthusiasm for our topic, only to find a large creamy coloured, sauropod-shaped egg in the classroom!
