The last term the Lán sè de (aka Neelam – 10-12 yr olds) group are reading ‘Unstoppable Us’ by Yuval Noah Harari.
The reading has opened questions like how do we know enough of the time gone by, what is the evidence, how do historians construct the story of a ‘long time ago’, what is there to be seen and felt?
A fascinating piece of the story of evolution is seen through fossils which are unearthed by Paleontologists. Evidence on the existence of the ‘other kind of humans’ (as Harari puts it) like the Floresians and Denisovans is through bone fragments and remains found in caves. ‘Which kind of a human are you’? he asks.
Fossils, bones, roots of hair and even spit contains a lot of information of the time gone by. And one child chimed “how did they know it was the finger of a young girl”?…all this information was intriguing and captured our imagination.
As we weren’t able to unearth fossils, we made our own!!
On a Friday afternoon, everyone gathered in the pottery shed with small animal toys, shells, play dough and POP. Play dough was used to make moulds and take imprints of the animals and shells; the face of a one horned Rhino became most popular!
Once the moulds were ready, a semi-liquid POP (plaster of paris) mixture, which everyone helped to mix, was poured in. It took about 20 mins to set and air dry. And voila! We had fossils in the house!!
