Our Geology Study

This 8 weeks our main unit study has been on Geology. We touched on this a tiny bit when we done our Solar System study a few months back. Here is a peek into some things we have done. We wraped this up last week.

We have been using:

 

Along with various books from the library about rocks and minerals, earthquakes and volcano's. This book has been wonderful. Its has all the activities laid out for you. Hands on experiments and lots of ideas!

Here is a little about the book:

Hands-on activities involving rocks, soil, fossils, earthquakes, and volcanoes that connect science with real life, choose Geology. This book, designed with good science and easy teaching in mind, covers these concepts:

the Earth has layers

the Earth's crust is made of rock and soil.

soil is made when rocks break down and mix with decaying plants

rocks have different properties

rocks are formed in different ways

the surface of the Earth is always changing

the resources we use come from the Earth

some rocks contain fossils that tell about life on Earth long ago

Activities helps practice skills in:

observation, analysis, communication, making comparisons, prediction, critical thinking, and recording. Areas of study address major themes such as: change, structure, function, diversity, and cause and effect.

Samples of the hands-on learning experiences:

conduct experiments to learn about the properties of rocks

cook up igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks

examine soil to find out what it's composed of

erupt a volcano in the classroom

make "fossils"

Contains many reproducible, ready-to-go resources, such as record sheets, logbook forms, mini books, and picture cards. Illustrated throughout with fun, yet accurate line art. All 80 pages perforated for easy removal.

We will be trying the other books in this series. I just bought the Plants book because of the time of year. I think that is going to be included for our next 8 weeks. However this time I am going to finish in 3 weeks. 8 weeks has just been to long on ONE topic. Normally I choose 3 or 4 and I learned my lesson this time. The kids need a change because they have *almost* lost interest in this!

Here are some pics from our study! Enjoy.

Our Volcano. They have really enjoyed learning about this! We may even do just a mini study and lapbook on this next 8 weeks. The book talked about the middle of the volcano and talked about why and how it erupts. Then spoke of what happened after the lava cools. We bought a rock kit from rockhounds when we started this study and the kids loved getting the Aztec Lava rock!!

This lesson was about erosion and how the earth changes by different methods(wind, ice, etc). This was a lesson we gathered sand, dirt, rocks, leaves, grass, sticks and a couple flowers. Piled it all up and then poured a large bucket of water over the pile...

This is the pile after the water. The sticks, grass, flowers, dirt, sand all moved. It washed! This was a way to explain over time how the earth will change depending on what happens.

This is all of us making a model of the earth's layers.

This is waiting patiently to see what in the world mom is up too ;)

This is a happy boy that has a model of 3 layers of the earth!!

We also made "posters" on conserving the earth's resources... We had a long talk about the things we could save and cut down on. We already recycle so they understood that. However we spoke about how when you leave the water running when you brush your teeth, your wasting water and I get so ticked the last few days... Zac will say ok remember save our water!!

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THIS IS THE LAST POST FOR A WEEK...

WE ARE ON VACATION AND NO COMPUTER TIME WILL BE ALLOWED ♥

HAVE A FANTASTIC WEEK AND BE BLESSED.