Science in the Library, Animals of the Ice Age

I have to say that I am so appreciative of the mom who runs this program at the Chugiak-Eagle River branch of the library.  You can tell that she has years of experience behind her and plenty of hands on tools to pull from when teaching the kids about these different topics in science.
This particular session began with puzzles for the kids to put together.  Or, maybe I should say try to put together as they are not that easy to do.

She showed how water filled in between the land and froze so that animals (and people) could have migrated from Asia to Alaska.  However, once things melted, whatever had made the journey was stuck.

With an active toddler in the house, I spent a significant amount of time out by the board books.  So, I can not recall exactly what this glacier building game was about.

They made mammoths out of paper.
 
The kids became giant sloths with three long claws.  Crawling about with them on was a challenge.

R decided to try cutting with the claws still in place.  But, he realized it was going to take forever after a short while.

What I didn’t get pictures of was a continent migration game she had the kids build (that’s what R’s cutting out in the above picture.)  The idea was to place some animals onto the board based on their current location.  Then, the ones that are not cut out get moved about from their point of origin to a final habitat. 
Also, they played a really neat game of saber tooth tiger grabs it’s dinner.  Using a saber tooth ‘mouth’ made from paper and toilet paper rolls, they had to hook the prey.  Some of the caught items were dinner and other things (like a tar pit) were  death to the saber tooth.  D managed to win the game by not getting anything that would kill him.  Combining motor skills with a lesson in what the animal ate or things that would have led to its death was a neat way to engage the kids.