"The Lower Elementary classes worked together to create a series of mixed media paintings depicting elements of Earth's timeline of life. The Timeline of Life lesson is one of the Montessori "Great Lessons" and is always a favorite for lower elementary students who enjoy learning about species that lived during the different eons and eras. They learn how the Earth evolved 4.5 billion years ago and then how life first appeared 3.7 billion years ago as single celled organisms. The first explosion of life only happened about 570 million years ago with humans appearing only about 300,000 years ago. They learn how species evolved or disappeared and went extinct.

For this series of paintings, each student chose a species to paint to represent the three eras of the present Phanerozoic eon - the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic.  They sketched their species in pencil and then painted them on a white plastic lid, which were mounted on a 24" x 30" canvas.  The canvas backgrounds show the progressive changes as life on Earth became habitable outside of the oceans alone and onto land. On the back of each painting is a list of the species painted by the students."

Size (width x height): 3 pieces, each @ 24" x 30"

Medium: acrylic on canvas