Inside the Earth

We did the first of our rock and mineral units yesterday.  We are using REAL Science Odyssey Earth and Space but out of order and only in pieces.

I like RSO for the nice concise overviews it gives for each topic and the simple demonstrations.  It is easy to supplement when desired. 

We watched a short video at Discovery Streaming called “Beneath the Surface:  Earth’s Inner Structure”.   This was a nice introduction to the topic.

We discussed various things that have layers. The video had mentioned a hard boiled egg, we discussed Oreo cookies, cake, sandwiches and fruits. We then talked about how the earth also has layers.

We read two books about the earth – The Magic School Bus: Inside the Earth by Cole, and How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the Earth by McNulty. The only problem with the How to dig.. book was that the book presented it as something that was really possible so I had to keep telling Georgie that “no, we couldn’t go visit the inner core and no one ever has”.




We read the summary page from RSO: Earth and Space and made our own play-doh model of the earth.   We made a inner core of pink, wrapped that in an outer core of yellow, a mantle of orange and then a crust of blue and green to show the continents and oceans.  Georgie had some trouble getting the new layers of play-doh to completely cover the previous ones.  We shaved a small piece off the edge so he did still wind up with 1/2 an earth that showed the layers.

  



We finished up by coloring and reading a small printable book and doing a worksheet from Evan-Moor Teacher’s File Box.

Our next unit will be showing how rocks are made of minerals and learning about mineral identification.