School-Age: The Grand Canyon

I have been to the Grand Canyon myself, was astonished by its vastness in person, but I surprisingly had not considered doing a school-age program about the Grand Canyon until I read Jason Chin's book about it!


1. Reading
I read "Grand Canyon" by Jason Chin. I love how detailed the illustrations and facts are PLUS it has small windows through several of the pages back in time to show how the Grand Canyon has been formed over millions and millions of years. What a neat idea!

2. Brain Break

Our brain break this week was "Pop See Ko". I had never heard of it before but, after watching a GoNoodle version of it, you can see how it is a very popular camp song. I made my teen helpers and my library assistant help me present the song, taking turns coming up with different movements.

3. Discussion

I showed the kids pictures of the Grand Canyon to demonstrate how HUGE it really is. I know pictures really cannot do the Grand Canyon justice but I told the kids I hoped the pictures would inspire them to visit the Grand Canyon one day.

I also went through a few of the various layers that Jason Chin's book discussed. For example, I showed them pictures of actual trilobite fossils from the Bright Angel Shale. The kids were wowed seeing the pictures in comparison to the illustrations, especially when they were on the 'big screen' of our TV.

4. Craft

I found tons of different versions of a Grand Canyon craft using pieces of paper. I have lots of left-over paper scraps from past projects so I put those out for the kids to use to create their own Grand Canyons.

Here's my example:

Notes:

The book was a little fact-heavy, but I skipped over parts of it especially when the kids were getting antsy. This was a fun week because the kids were SUPER interested and asked tons of questions!