Second Great Lesson: The Coming of Life

The Second Great Lesson follows the First as the story flows from matter to life. The child sees that they are the latest chapter in an unimaginable story — humbling and inspiring. From here flow biology, zoology, botany, and ecology.

• Framework: Montessori
• Unit: Cultural Studies
• Learning area: Cosmic Education
• Level: Ages 6-8

Objectives

• Hear the story of the emergence of life on Earth
• Experience the Time Line of Life
• Open the study of biology, evolution, and ecology
• Understand humans as part of the web of life

Materials

• Time Line of Life (scroll with illustrations)
• Charts of Earth's layers and early atmosphere
• Fossil replicas (trilobite, ammonite)
• Story of the first cells and their descendants

Instructions

1. Gather the children around the rolled timeline. 2. Open with the story of the young, fiery Earth cooling. 3. Describe the first oceans, the first cells, the great stretches of time with only microbes. 4. Unroll the timeline era by era, pointing to the illustrations. 5. Introduce the great extinctions and the radiations that followed. 6. Pass around fossil replicas. 7. Show humans appearing in the final sliver. 8. Close with wonder: 'And we are the latest. What will we do with our time?' 9. Leave the timeline and fossils out for study.

Educator tip

Tell the story as a continuing drama — not as data. The child's imagination is what carries the science.

Assessment

Observe the follow-up research children initiate: dinosaurs, early mammals, fossils, extinct species.

More from Cultural Studies

• Parts of the Bird
• Time Line of Humans
• Work of Water — Erosion Experiments
• Biomes of the World
• Fourth Great Lesson: The Story of Writing
• Fifth Great Lesson: The Story of Numbers
• Music — Tone Bars and Scales
• Economic Geography — Where Things Come From