Moving mountains

Today we moved mountains!  Literally. 

Well, actually just models of mountains (but I did carry 50 pounds of sand!).  The children used straws to model wind erosion . . . and then soon realized that maybe goggles were appropriate safety equipment for this work.

Spray bottles helped to model rain (and the resulting topsoil runoff), rivers, and waves. 

The children observed that rivers cut a v-shaped valley through their mountains.

 

Slowly, they pushed blocks of ice (frozen with gravel) down their mountains.  The glaciers cut u-shaped valleys as they traveled, leaving behind rocky moraines and finally melting into glacial lakes at the bottoms of the mountains.

 

The erosion also revealed some (formerly buried) interesting finds!  Stay tuned!  Next week, we are paleontologists.

 

There's a Book for That!

The Sun, the Wind, and the Rain by Lisa Westberg Peters