Physical Science and Earth Science lessons are our favorite! I introduce them in 3-6 in a simplified way, then in elementary they come as follow up activities after introducing the first great lesson. They are also part of the Cosmic Curriculum.
This week we enjoyed a variety of activities working with the layers of earth that you can try with your child to reinforce the concept. First, we watched couple of documentaries on YouTube to build a visual understanding using simulation and real footage at times.
We used the Montessori layers of earth puzzle to reconstruct the layers over and over again. The layers can be traced to create a layers of earth chart.
If you don't have this material there are many DIY ideas that can build the impression and serve the same goal of these puzzles. We made the layers from felt. The crust is the thinnest layer and is almost only 1%, while the mantle is around 2/3 of our planet. Yousuf enjoyed adding the little green parts to the surface. Since he is still in the sensitive period of order, he asked for more green parts to cover the whole outline in a perfect circle :)
The activity we enjoyed the most was the layers in a bottle. This experiment focuses on the density of the particles. You can add blue food coloring to some water in a bottle, then add oil. You will observe that the oil will float. We added honey and it sank at the bottom, as it represents the denser particles. No matter how you try to shake and mix the layers, they will still remain in the same place and order.
Try out these ideas and share with us!
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