Welcome to Jurassic Park!

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Do YOU want to go to Jurassic Park?!

    Our students sure did! When we found out our gifted enrichment unit was going to be dinosaurs- we immediately headed over to Hope King's ultimate Jurassic Park room transformation for some ideas. No need to reinvent the wheel people! Work smarter- not harder! 


    We managed to pull this off with some help. Weeks before we set this up, we emailed out to our student's parents that we were planning this surprise and asked if anyone had old dinosaur toys laying around that they wanted to donate. You know a lot of kids go through a dinosaur phase at one point or another- let us take that off your hands! They came through with this and more. We even had parents offer to make us giant cardboard cut out dinosaurs- SO COOL! Now we can keep these in storage (You know, behind my bookshelves) and reuse them again! The total set up took about 2 hours with the help of our husbands. The first time you do something like this will be the longest, the next time will take less time because you know what you're doing! Get your grade level involved and use one room for all the classes. Come up with a schedule to use the room throughout the day for that subject to get the most bang for your buck (more on how we did that later). 


   
    First, we set the mood by dressing up of course! We dressed the part with a khaki button down fishing shirt, boots, homemade Jurassic Park ID badges, and walkie talkies courtesy of a local laser tag place buying new ones and giving us their old ones! Before we let the students walk in the room, they saw the caution tape. Then, they hear on the walkie talkie- "It's feeding time, hold off the guests a few more minutes." You should have seen their faces! It was a classic moment. Then came the all clear call and students were let in.



    They hear the Jurassic Park theme in the background, grab a safari hat or headlamp and head to their jeep. We had the lights off with spotlights around the room to add to the mood. We made the jeeps by pushing their desks together and covering them with black table cloths (when you buy a big roll, you can cut to the size you need and save the rest for later). Then, we used tin foil to make the grates on the front and pie pans for the headlights. The bar at the top we made with duck tape and pipe insulation. One tip that we wish we had done- tie the desks together so they don't move apart. Our room mom even finished off our day with dirt cups (pudding and oreaos) complete with edible dino eggs (jelly beans) and a hidden layer of dino bones (yogurt pretzels) to drive the fun home!



    This room transformation was the kick off to our dinosaur enrichment unit with the gifted students at our school. One of our amazing co-workers set up a guest speaker for us! She was a paleontologist and now a professor at our local college. We used this one classroom we decorated for her to be able to talk to 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, and 4th grade gifted students for an hour each throughout the day. She did an activity with each group. This way, one room had a HUGE impact by having at least 100 students come in and out throughout the day. 

    While we did have a guest speaker who did a dinosaur-themed activity with our students, we wanted other teachers to see the magic as well and know that this could be done with ANY standard you're teaching. We invited other teachers in our school to come watch a demo math lesson. We took a 4th grade math standard and made it totally dinosaur themed. We took what our students were actually learning in math, and made it come to life! This could be as simple as changing the words in the word problems to be related to dinosaurs. For ELA, we used dinosaur-themed reading passages and had our students research and answer questions based on 4th grade ELA standards. 

We couldn't have pulled this off without the help of our amazing coworkers and parents. This doesn't all have to fall on just your shoulders. Get others involved! Make an Amazon wishlist with some of the items linked below, and see if parents, admin, or people in your community want to contribute something small to make a big effect in your classroom. Or even consider making a Donor's Choose project! These items can be used year after year or even be borrowed by other teachers and will surely be worth saving. The impact will be a lasting one!

    Part of our mission as educators is to inspire other teachers to come out of their comfort zone and try something that makes you nervous, but excited! We were so excited about this project and can't wait to do it again. Let us know if you have any questions! 

Check out our Instagram story highlight for videos of the finished product! 

Your Jurassic Park room transformation shopping list (Amazon Affiliate Links):

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