Earth Science Activities: Earthquakes, Plate Movement and Mountain Making

Last week I explained how we made an Earthquake Shake Table and shared a quick video on how we made ours.  We first tested it with marshmallow structures.  A couple days later, we made “brick” structures out of sugar cubes and peanut butter.  We put on the documentary, Deadliest Earthquakes, and set to work.

We all built our structures and then brought out our shake table to test them out!

The most exciting structure we tested was ED’s. The first time they pulled the shake table, one brick fell off the top. With the second earthquake, the entire wall fell down!

As we finished up our unit we talked about the plate movements again.  We reviewed the three types of plate boundaries:

1. divergent boundary — plates move apart. Most divergent boundaries are found in the ocean such as the mid-ocean ridges.
2. convergent boundary — occurs where plates push together
3. transform boundary — occurs where plates scrape past each other.

We pulled out our Earth science notebook pages and went over those again. We also talked convection currents and talked about the experiment we did in November showing plate movement:

Then we went over the four types of mountains. We talked quite a bit about fold mountains again.  This was one of the activities we did. On a deep plate, we added a small bit of water and placed two graham crackers on top. Slowly, we pressed the two graham crackers together with slow-but-steady pressure:

This Earth science activity can also be done with towels. Just be sure to press them together slowly, not quickly. When we compared these to a picture of the Alps, the kids could really understand how the two tectonic plates converging could make mountains rise (and fold too).

We finished out the unit making sure we had finished all of our Earth Science notebook pages. These pages are available in the 75+ Page Earth Science Packet.

One last thing before I go. I thought I should share some of the books we used for this part of our Earth Science Unit:

We especially liked the books below. These are affiliate links:

• Geology Rocks
• How the Earth Works: 60 Fun Activities for exploring Volcanoes, Fossils, Earthquakes and More
• Janice VanCleave’s Earthquakes
• Earth-Shaking Science Projects about Planet Earth (Rockin’ Earth Science Experiments)

Don’t miss our 150+ page Earth Science Packet!! You will find this packet and more in our Store!

Learn how to make a earthquake shake table, more than a dozen hands-on activities on the layers of the earth, volcanoes, earthquakes, plate movement and more!

Topics include: Solar System, Layers of the Earth, Earth’s Axis and the Seasons, Latitude and Longitude, Plate Tectonics, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, 4 Types of Mountains

Earth Science Packet

Layers of the Atmosphere Packet 

You will find this packet and more in our Store!

You Might Be Interested in These Related Posts:

• Learning about the Solar System – Including the hands-on kit the kids loved assembling and painting.
• Earth Science: Timeline of Earth Activity – A Montessori activity that is meant to impress kids with the enormity of time on Earth.
• Earth’s Geologic Timeline – Earth’s history separated by eons in a way the kids could really understand
• Earth Science – Layers of the Earth Activity
• Learning about Latitude and Longitude, Using a Compass
• Earth Science: Plate Movement Hands-On Activities
• Tissue Paper Volcano – Create a 3-D volcano image. The kids LOVED this craft
• Hands-On Volcano Activities: Gelatin Volcan0 & Paper Mache Volcano – We learned SO much from the gelatin volcano activity. I highly recommend doing this for understanding how lava flows as it does.
• Making a Shake Table for our Earthquake Studies – This post has a short video on how we made our shake table

• Earth Science Activities: Earthquakes, Plate Movement, Mountain Formation, the 4 Types of Mountains 

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Happy Homeschooling!

~Liesl

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.