Cave Unit Study and Activities

We started the school year off learning about Caves because I wanted something I knew would be engaging for Ziggy. There are some really fun field trips to go with caves and I just thought he would love the geology! And he did!

This unit lasted until Halloween so we got to do some fun Halloween tie-ins with bats also. Our previous Cave Unit can be found here (this went along with a trip to New Mexico and Carlsbad Caverns! I wish we could go there again!).

Some miscellaneous resources:

An interesting website: https://www.design42.com/caving/home.htm

Cool movie about The Deepest Cave

A short film about Carlsbad Caverns

Interesting film: Inside Hidden Caves

We also watched a good video called "Hidden Forests" which I can't find right now.

There's a Planet Earth section on Caves: (Season 1 Episode 4)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B09226TR6X/ref=aiv_DVAPI_watchlistToggle

I've always been fascinated by this giant crystal cave. They've learned a lot more about it since I first learned about it ten years ago in our first cave unit!

We learned about the Lascaux caves and other prehistoric cave art and did these "cave paintings" on paper bags. (Something like this.) We used chalk and crayons, and even burned the ends of some skewers so we could use "charcoal" like the ancient people did.

Gus and Clementine joined in too

Clementine (she looks so young here!) was very pleased with herself

Big kindergarten boy

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This was a little activity on dissolution when we were talking about how stalactites and stalagmites are formed. Ideas here:

Dissolving M&Ms and Amazing Solubility

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This was a fun activity (idea from here)—we put a soluble mineral (sugar cubes) under an insoluble mineral (clay) and dripped water through a small hole in the clay. The sugar dissolved in the water, leaving cavities underneath the clay.

We could see how some caves form in the sides of cliffs, and other areas form sinkholes beneath the ground level

Lots of little caverns here—I wish I could shrink myself and go in exploring!

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Best of all were the multitude of drawings of spelunkers Ziggy did during this unit! We watched some movies about cave divers and cave explorers and his imagination was really caught by that. He drew his poor little explorers squeezing through so many tight and winding caverns! (They didn't mind, though, because they were so prepared with lanterns, ropes, hooks, and so forth! And because they got to see so many wonders!)

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For our culminating activity of this unit, we decorated our trunk (for the ward Trunk or Treat) like a cave! We made stalactites and stalagmites, and hung bats from the ceiling. It looked cute, and we were rather proud of it…but then we saw a bunch of other amazing trunks other people had decorated and realized it was not quite as impressive as we'd thought. :) But we had fun making it all the same!