Category: Science: Earth Science Unit

0

Homeschool Science: Year in Review and What’s Coming Up

When I think about all we’ve done this past year in 2015 in science, I’m really pretty amazed! It’s been a fun, full year!  This post has links to dozens of our science experiments, printables and hands-on activities. You’ll find direct links to the posts in the table below. We managed to squeeze in various engineering (STEM) type activities here and there. In January of 2015 we were in the...

4 Earth Systems Worksheets 2

Earth’s 4 Major Systems (Free): Atmosphere, Geosphere, Hydrosphere, Biosphere

As we start off our new science units, I wanted to be sure the kids remembered Earth’s 4 major systems (or ecospheres): atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere.  We spent several days just reviewing these four Earth Systems in a general way.  You know me, I also made the kids some notebook pages and review cards to go along with our discussion!  I thought it might be helpful for some of you...

Earth Science Worksheet - volcanoes plates faults earthquakes 25

Earth Science Packet: Layers of the Earth, Plate Tectonics, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, 4 Types of Mountains and More!

This 150+ page Earth Science Packet includes worksheets about the solar system, the layers of the Earth, plate tectonics, the ring of fire, earthquake activity and volcanoes. I also included instructions for more than a dozen hands-on activities we did with this unit. This includes activities about plate tectonics, using a compass, earthquakes, volcanoes,  instructions on how to make a shake table and more! My kids were in Grades 1, 4,...

2

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...

0

How to Make a Shake Table for Earthquake Studies

The next part of our Earth Science unit was earthquakes. Today’s post I’ll explain how we made our shake table, but before I do that I want to talk a minute about of some of the activities we did leading up to that. We used a lot of the activities from Engineering Adventures.  The kids’ first activity was building towers. Their first project was to build a tower of  index cards...

Gelatin Volcano Activity - Hands-On Earth Science Activities 0

Earth Science – Awesome Gelatin Volcano and other Activities

We have two hands-on volcano activities to share with you today; the gelatin activity was especially cool once we realized our mistake!  Both of them help demonstrate how the release of pressure causes lava to flow. We had already spent a lot of time learning about plate tectonics.  Earth’s volcanoes are generally found where Earth’s plates are expanding or converging.  We looked closely at the parts of the volcano and...

2

Earth Science Activities – Volcanoes (Tissue Paper Volcano Craft)

I am SO excited to start sharing some of our hands-on Earth Science activities again! We did three or four different volcano activities and several fun Earthquake activities that we’ll share with you over the next week or two. And, of course, the long-awaited Earth science packet is just about ready to share as well. This first volcano craft is an idea I first saw over at Our Worldwide Classroom. We...

0

Engineering Activities for Kids

In this post, I’m going to talk first about some engineering activities my kids did over the break… and then in the second part of this post I’m going to share an amazing free engineering resource for kids. So, first the activities!  As many of you know, I found out that I would have to move our blog from our Parents.com location to this new website.  That was an enormous...

Ringing Rocks 0

Ringing Rocks, PA – A Boulder Field Where You Can Make “Rock Music”!

We’ve been studying Earth Science and this trip to Ringing Rocks fit in perfectly!! Ringing Rocks State Park in Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania is a seven acre boulder field… a paradise of climbing for my kids!! What is especially neat is that if you take a rock or hammer and tap on the boulders, they ring! Different rocks make different tones, so we were all enthralled with making “rock music”!! Approximately...

2

Earth Science: Plate Movement Hands-On Activities

We just love hands-on activities! We’ve been studying Earth Science this fall. This post shares some pictures of some of the Earth Science activities we added into our unit. Back several weeks ago, we explained how we started this unit… with an overview of our solar system, then a closer look at Earth’s geologic timeline talking about the age of the Earth (4.6 billion years) and the appearance of various...

4

Earth Science: Earth’s Geologic Timeline

We spent about a week learning about Earth’s four eons and most recent eras.  Today I wanted to share several of the activities we did to go along with this part of our unit. As you may recall, we reviewed the planets in the Solar System, talked about the age of the Earth (4.6 Billion years)  and did an impressionistic activity to show how short human history actually is compared to...

9

Learning Latitude, Longitude and Using a Compass

A few days ago, I shared the hands-on activity we did to learn about the layers of the Earth.  We’ve also been learning about how we show and locate the exact positions of the land and water. I explained that most maps and globes are marked with lines that help us pinpoint an exact location on the Earth. These lines form an imaginary grid. The equator is just one of...

5

Earth Science Packet on the Layers of the Atmosphere (Now Updated!)

Layers of the Atmosphere (Now Updated!) Worksheets, Notebook Pages and Hands-On Activities! Our Layers of the Atmosphere Packet introduced the kids to some of the basics about Earth’s atmosphere.  We started with a review of Earth’s systems: the geosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere and then spent quite a bit of time talking about the different layers of the atmosphere (the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere). Our Layers of the...

12

Earth Science: Layers of the Earth Hands-On Activity

Last week, I mentioned that we learned a bit about the Solar System in general.  This week we’ve been looking more closely at Earth’s long history.  We’ve been going over the four major eons and looking more closely at what happened in each (Hadean Eon, Archean Eon, Proterozoic Eon, Phanerozoic Eon). At first 4.6-4 billion years ago, the Earth would have been molten. Then as the Earth cooled it went from liquid...