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Layers of the Atmosphere unit

April 10, 2015 Ticia 12 Comments

We’ve been having a bad luck run with our science lessons recently.  It feels like most of our projects just go horribly wrong, and I’ve felt rather unenthused about posting them because of that.  But, I have an earth science project that went great, and I need to move forward.  So I present our layers of the atmosphere lesson.

Hands on atmosphere lesson

Layers of the Atmosphere theories

There are two different theories for the earth’s atmosphere: composition and temperature.  The composition theory is rather boring: two different types, which I’m not bothering with right now.  So let’s look at the layer by temperature, that’s what we most often hear referred to.

The layers of the atmosphere according to temperature are: the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere.

Layers of the Atmosphere project supplies

atmosphere lesson supplies

4 shades of blue tissue paper (I save all tissue paper from presents we receive or you can buy some:Colored Tissue Pack), watered down School Glue, Marker Tower, and card stock

Making your layers of the atmosphere project

Atmosphere lesson step 1

Cover the cardstock with glue and put the lightest color of the atmosphere over the glue.  This represents the Troposphere.

atmosphere lesson step 2

Tear the edges of the next lightest shade of blue (if you want go ahead and do this for all the rest of the shades).  We’re doing this to show it’s not a clear hard line between the layers, but a gradual change.

Atmosphere lesson step 4

Slowly add the different layers, the middle two layers are double the size of the others, so allow them more space (I felt it was kind of silly to show every single step over and over, also I didn’t take pictures).  The final layer is the very darkest blue color.

atmosphere lesson step 5

Finally, add information about each of the layers.  Here’s the shorthand we added, obviously our CKE Earth and Space book had more information.

  • Troposphere- always changing, where most of the weather happens
  • Stratosphere- temperature goes up as you go up
  • Mesosphere- strong winds
  • Thermosphere- protects us from the meteors falling into our atmosphere
layers of the earth's atmosphere lesson

We also had a bit of fun adding in our own little odds and ends of personality.

For more earth science ideas check out my Pinterest board:

Follow Ticia Adventures in Mommydom’s board Earth Science for kids on Pinterest.

Check out some more 4th-grade fun

Apparently, we studied Earth Science during 4th grade, so let’s see what else we studied then:

  • Writer’s Notebook
  • Finding Fats in Food lesson
  • Legend of the Bluebonnet Texas history lesson
  • Holes book club
  • Battle of Hastings lesson

STEM 4th grade, earth science

Comments

  1. Phyllis says

    April 10, 2015 at 3:20 pm

    How timely that you would post about the layers of the atmosphere this week. We, as you know, are studying rockets and talking about how far they go up. This will fit in perfectly!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 10, 2015 at 11:56 pm

      Oh yes it would, I hadn’t even thought about that.

  2. Kylie says

    April 10, 2015 at 5:02 pm

    Ok that looks cool. We did a fun layers of the atmosphere project last year too 🙂

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 10, 2015 at 11:56 pm

      There’s a lot of really cool layers of the earth activities out there.

  3. maryanne @ mama smiles says

    April 10, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    Okay, that last photo has me curious. Your layers of the atmosphere activity is great!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 10, 2015 at 11:56 pm

      It makes for quite a story.

  4. Almost Unschoolers says

    April 10, 2015 at 9:46 pm

    I had no idea there were different theories about the atmosphere – interesting. Love the project. But, I’m really looking forward to hearing about that last picture 🙂

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 10, 2015 at 11:57 pm

      I hadn’t known either until I read the chapter. I’d only known about the ones we covered now.

  5. Claire says

    April 12, 2015 at 3:48 pm

    I love your project. Earth sciences is something we haven’t covered at all and I can’t wait. Glad you are doing it first though!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 12, 2015 at 10:07 pm

      We’ve had fun with it even if our projects haven’t gone as well as I would have liked.

  6. Marie-Claude Leroux says

    April 14, 2015 at 4:33 pm

    It can be so discouraging when science projects don’t work out (especially when you count on them to help information sink in!) – this layers of the atmospheres project turned out great though!

    Reply
  7. Natalie PlanetSmartyPants says

    April 15, 2015 at 12:09 am

    This is a great lesson! It sounds like you had a very busy Easter. We spent most of ours packing for our trip, but there was an obligatory egg hunt.

    Reply

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Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

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