One very popular homeschool science unit this year was our plate tectonics lesson for earth science (let’s see if you can guess why it was such a hit). I’ll give you a hint, afterward, there was much bath taking because of stickiness.
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Plate tectonics unit: graham cracker plates
Supplies: graham crackers,
While the kids enjoyed eating the results of this activity, I don’t think they quite got it all together, mainly because I didn’t explain it well, but down at the bottom, I’ve linked to a couple of places that handled this activity better than I did.
(I’ve had two suggestions for making this work better in the comments: 1. use icing because the crackers don’t absorb as much liquid then, and 2. use shaving cream and balloons [great for warmer weather and doing it outside])
The idea is to let the kids use the graham crackers and the pudding to push them together to simulate different ways the continental plates hit each other. But, our graham crackers got soggy way too fast.
Instead, they had fun eating the pudding-covered graham crackers and generally threatening me with messy hands.
Plate tectonics unit: eggshell earth
This plate tectonics activity is what first started getting it through their head; this may have been one of the activities mentioned in CKE Earth and Space*, but I’m not sure, and I’m too lazy to go find my book.
Supplies: hard-boiled egg, and a hard surface
Once the egg has cooled down enough to touch, and this takes preparation AND remembering you have them. This is a hard thing for me, so I’d just like to point out I completed the activity and did not leave it half done.
Crush the eggshell so it’s cracking, but not falling off. Then move the eggshell around carefully, and you can see the pieces of the egg shell are rather like the tectonic plates. They move around and sometimes push another piece up or down, and sometimes it causes the piece to slide another way.
Plate tectonics unit: printable map
This I know, came from the CKE Earth and Space, and is probably what led to me buying the reproducible download so it was easier to print.
Well, the kids sat there and cut out all of the different continental plates, and after cutting them all out, I asked what observations they had, and here’s what they discovered:
- Some continental plates are huge, and some are small.
- Many of the continental plates are actually continents, but many aren’t. North America is made up of several plates.
- The plates split in unexpected places.
- California really could sink into the ocean. Okay, that was my observation, but it is on a different tectonic plate than the rest of the country. But we’d only lose part of the state.
It was quite an interesting experience
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More Earth Science Ideas
- Florida ocean layers science lesson
- Why do we float in the Great Salt Lake?
- Preschool Rain Experiment
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