Earth Science Unit — Gravity
We have been making slow headway through our Ancient Rome unit, but we needed some new spice added into our homeschool days. We’re off to do a unit on earth science — studying concepts such as gravity, horizontal/vertical, directionality–N,S,E,W, and then moving on to the layers of the earth and the surface of the earth — the “ups and downs, ins and outs” of the landforms and waterforms and how wind, water and earth’s forces change the surface of the earth.
I get asked every now and then how I plan for our homeschool units. I’m pretty much always a unit or two ahead (in my head), knowing that we’ll move on to a new history/science/culture/child-interest-led unit or whatever. So in my spare time (??ie. late at night mostly!!) I think and read and jot notes in my “rainbow” notebook as things cross my path for 3 or 4 weeks before we actually start a unit.
In this case, I’ve been wanting to cover landforms and waterforms–mountains, valleys, plateaus, peninsulas, isthmus, bays and that sort of thing. I have some beautiful cards from theteacherdesk.info – landforms, but wanted to go beyond just looking at the forms and making clay models (we’ll do this too, but I wanted to flush the unit out a bit since LD is now in second grade).
For the past week or two my bedtime reading has been Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 (affliliate link) by Bernard J. Nebel. I looked through this book a year or so ago, but found it too advanced for our family at the time. But now it has some great lesson plans that I plan to use.
I also decided to sign up for the teacher file box (30% discount through homeschool buyer’s coop) because I felt I could use a lot of their resources in the next 3 or 4 months. (At some point in the next couple of months I’ll be doing a fairy tale unit with the kids and the teacher file box had a lot of cute/creative ideas for that!)
Anyway, today was our first day of our earth science unit– and the kids were both totally engaged (and begged to go on!). Yay! A good start! Here’s what we covered:
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.
You may be interested in the posts in this series:
- Earth Science Unit — Gravity
- Earth Science — Gravity: the planets, moon and space
- Astronomy Unit: Refraction, Vacuum, Saturn’s Rings
- Astronomy Unit: Inner and Outer Planets, The Asteroid Belt
- Astronomy Unit: The Moon (Day 1)
- Astronomy Unit: The Moon (Day 2)
- Phases of the Moon Activity: Homemade Oreo Cookie Recipe (Yum!!)
You might also be interested in these related posts (we did these when my kids were older… ie. elementary):
- Earth Science Packet: Layers of the Earth, Plate Tectonics, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, 4 Types of Mountains and More!
- Earth Science Layers of the Earth Activity
- Earth Science: Plate Movement Hands-On Activiites
- Earth Science Packet: Layers of the Atmosphere
- Earth Science Activities: Earthquakes, Plate Movement and Mountain Making
- Learning about Latitude and Longitude, Using a Compass
- 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 – How scientists divide Earth’s history into eons and eras
- Earth Science: Plate Movement Hands-On Activities
- How to Make a Earthquake Shake Table
- Awesome Gelatin Volcano and other Activities
- Earth Science Activities: Tissue Paper Volcano
- Free Water and Water Cycle Resources
- Topographic Maps
- The Three Types of Rocks: Sedimentary, Metamorphic, Igneous
- Free Rocks and Minerals Packet
- World Biomes Pin Map
- Preschool Geography
You did a wonderful job of teaching this lesson, with lots of fun activities (don't you just love Homeschooling?)! Your children will probably remember this forever, and they certainly weren't bored.Thanks for sharing,WendyFaith's Firm Foundation
You did a wonderful job of teaching this lesson, with lots of fun activities (don't you just love Homeschooling?)! Your children will probably remember this forever, and they certainly weren't bored.Thanks for sharing,WendyFaith's Firm Foundation