Category: Science: Earth Science Unit

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The Three Types of Rocks– Our Activities and a Free Worksheet Packet about igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks

A few days ago I shared the Rocks and Minerals Packet I made for ED (which is also free). I wanted to spend more time on the three types of rocks–igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.  The kids were SO excited when they realized this activity was going to include semi-sweet chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, heath crunch bits and flaked coconut. (No we didn’t eat it all,...

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Free Montessori 3-Part Cards: Famous Rocks Around the World

Here’s another freebie from our Rocks and Minerals Unit: Free Printable Montessori 3-Part Cards on Famous Rocks Around the World! If your students are studying Rocks and Minerals they might enjoy this activity about Famous Rocks Around the World! This set includes the Sphinx, Stonehenge, Mt. Rushmore, Uluru, Arches, the Rock of Gibraltar and others.  Hope you find these helpful. 🙂 Have a great day! ~Liesl Famous Rocks Around the...

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World Biomes Pin Map

Are you asking yourself, “What in the world is a biomes pin map?”  It’s a map that shows where the rain forests, deserts, grasslands, forest and tundra regions are located. A pin map is when you stick straight pins into the labels so kids can pinpoint where things are located. There you go, sounds fancy, but really it’s not! 🙂   Before we really delved into our study of rain...

The Future of Space Exploration as the Space Shuttle Program Ends 2

The Future of Space Exploration as the Space Shuttle Program Ends

We learned some really amazing space missions are in development!  Last week we watched the Space Shuttle Discovery in awe as it flew close by our house towards its final destination. The Space Shuttle Program has truly come to an end. We went to see the space shuttle is in its new home at the Udvar-Hazy National Air and Space Museum, but we were surprised to learn just how much...

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Preschool Geography

NAME THAT CONTINENT: One morning in collection (our group time) I brought out a beach ball globe. We took turns tossing the ball around the circle. Each time someone caught the ball they had to look at where their thumb had landed and had to name that continent. The kids quickly became silly, but we did manage to get a few rounds in for each of them. Another preschool geography...

Let’s Learn about the World 2

Let’s Learn about the World

When we start back into our school year LD and DD are going to learn some basic facts about the world in which we live — the largest continent-Asia the largest country-Russia the largest ocean-Pacific the largest desert-Sahara the tallest mountain-Mt. Everest the longest river-the Nile has been long thought to be the longest river, but an expedition in 2000 found the Amazon River to be 64 miles longer. world...

How mountains form - activity 15

Earth Science: How Fold Mountains are Formed

The most common types of mountains are fold mountains. Some fold mountains include the Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, and Alps. This activity showed how plate movement creates folded mountains.When the two continents collide, the plates wrinkle and fold.  Here’s our activity to show this happening.  It’s the same principle as the damp graham cracker we did a few days ago, but this shows the “layers” of the earth folding/wrinkling. Showing how...

Tectonic Plates Hands-On Activity 8

Earth Science: Plate Movements, Pangaea

We were still talking about plate tectonics on Friday. We talked about how scientists theorize that the continents were once connected as one giant super-continent, Pangaea. I cut out South America and Africa and asked them to fit them together as best the could. When they didn’t fit together perfectly I asked the kids why the continents wouldn’t match perfectly after 250 million years? We talked about erosion and the...

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Earth Science: Plate Movement, Earthquakes

We looked a bit more closely at what happens at fault lines where slight shifts in the crust cause earthquakes. First the kids all made their own layered crust. ED especially enjoyed this! Then we placed an index card in a larger container and created layers on both sides of the paper. We moved the index card back and forth and watched as the grains of rice shifted and moved....

Plate Tectonics Activity 16

Earth Science: Plate Movements & Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Mountain-Making

Here’s our hands-on studies of tectonic plate movements, 2nd grade style. We used: a tray with a thin layer of chilled jello (jelly) graham crackers for the earth’s crustal plates colored icing (green-continents and blue-oceans) You can see LD putting the continent and ocean onto his plate (ie. graham cracker). We read about the plates and tectonic plate movement and looked carefully at this map.  We talked about how when...

Layers of the Earth Hands-On Activity 28

Earth Science: Layers of the Earth Hands-on Activity

Just adding this in on Tuesday: I found out today that I have Pneumonia which is why I’ve been feeling ever so lousy. I first saw this activity last year at The Learning Ark. It fit in perfectly with our Earth Science unit. There is also a similar activity using a hard-boiled egg in the book we are using for this unit, How the Earth Works by Michelle O’Brien-Palmer.  One...

Earth Science–The Eight Planets 10

Earth Science–The Eight Planets

 We learned about the eight planets in our Solar System.  While the kids painted with watercolors, I sang this song from the Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum Website.  It’s called “Family of the Sun” and has one verse describing each of the eight planets (plus Pluto, the dwarf planet).  It’s sung to the Farmer in the Dell:  Here’s the first two verses and the chorus:1)Mercury is hotand Mercury is...

Earth Science: Nesting boxes from the Galaxy… on down to the Atom 7

Earth Science: Nesting boxes from the Galaxy… on down to the Atom

I thought this was such a great idea for talking about our location, size and placement in the universe. It’d even be great for a study of maps. What a great lesson on where we live!! I had these all stacked together and went over these one by one asking them which galaxy we live in, what planet, what state, city, street etc. Then piled them one on top of...

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Earth Science — Gravity: the planets, moon and space

Today we had our second earth science lesson.  LD begged to do science again and I always love that enthusiasm! I’m still using  Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2  (affliliate link) as the basis for some of our lessons. *I read an excerpt about how the earth isn’t the only place with gravity. The moon and other planets have gravity too.  We talked about how people...