Tell Me Some Parts of the Earth Cycle 1 Week 13

Classical Conversations Science, Cycle 1 Week 13

Tell me about some parts of the earth.

 That sounds like an open invitation for some playdoh! We created ours out of 4 colors of playdoh, one each for the inner core, outer core, mantle, and crust.  I didn't make these quite to scale because all of my tubs of playdoh were the same size, but when I did it for my abecedarian class, I made homemade dough (and added some glitter to it! yay!) and was able to scale it better so that the mantle was larger than the other sections.  I think doing the inner core in a solid ball of something (maybe a bouncey ball from a vending machine?) would be really great, too! How cool is it that the center of the earth is so incredibly hot, but yet it's solid because of the incredible pressure?  So cool!

 For my abecedarians, I also wanted to reinforce the hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere, so we printed out a coloring page of the beach:

And I let the kids color their picture and then glue on labels.  The beach theme was nice because it had life (bio), water (hydro) and air (atmo).  They had so much fun doing some projects during class, which I really enjoy doing with them when I get time.  Typically our classes are so quick and tight there's not time for anything fun, and I know Leah Bortin's vision is "stick in the sand" but teaching is more fun for me when I get to be creative, so our "first day" of each 12 weeks is my favorite because we can have fun :)