Landforms, Glaciers, and Erosion

We were lucky this year because we got to take the best Geology Field Trip ever—to the Canadian Rockies! We went to Banff and Jasper National Parks. It was amazing! You can read more about our trip here, but I'm including a few pictures of the mountains and glaciers we saw.

Below, you can read about a few activities we did to learn about these principles when we got back from our trip.

These glaciers were amazing to see! I love the blue tones of the ice as it gets thicker.

This is Athabasca Glacier—you can walk right up onto this one.

Gorgeous turquoise glacial lake

Perfect example of a glacial U-shaped valley!

One day we made play-dough (this is my favorite recipe) and the children made all the different kinds of landforms we'd been learning about: mountains, glaciers, moraines, volcanoes, and so forth.

A cave!

Fold mountain

A volcanic mountain range (from a hot spot). And I think there are some hoodoos in there too.

Teddy, very serious about his fold mountain…

and his sinkhole!

Fault-block and tectonic plate collision mountains

While in Canada, we stayed at a house by a river and found some beautiful river rocks.

They were already so smooth and flat and pretty! We collected a few…

And took them home to polish in our rock tumbler!

Didn't they turn out beautifully?

Another fun way to make landforms in with sand in a cake pan—then you pour water in to make deltas, rivers, lakes, etc. More pictures and ideas here.

Another activity we did was making some big blocks of ice and then experimenting with them on a nearby hill. We learned about glacial till, terminal and lateral moraines, cirques, glacial striations, etc. And, we had fun sliding down the hill on our ice blocks! :)

You can find more glacier activities here. And even more here.

Chocolate Rock Cycle Activity

I really like to do this activity with chocolate when teaching the Rock Cycle—it's such a great hands-on summation of how each step of the process works. You can see more pictures and instructions here from last time we did it. But, since this is also a journal for our family, I'm going to post pictures and a brief summary from this time too.

(It's interesting to compare the pictures of Malachi doing this activity…six years apart!)

Start with several types of baking chips for each child. We had chocolate, peanut butter, and white chocolate chips. These are your basic rocks and minerals. Let the children "weather" some of their rocks by grating them into smaller pieces with the microplane grater and letting the pieces fall on the aluminum foil.

Next, fold the foil into a packet and squish the little pieces and big pieces all together inside. Add lots of pressure—my kids like to step on and sit on their packets to make everything stick together.

When they unwrap their foil packets, they can see that all the different rocks and minerals have been cemented together into a "sedimentary rock"!

Next, wrap your rock up in foil again and add even more heat and pressure! Flatten it with your fist as hard as you can, stomp on it, hold it for a long time between your palms, pile books on top of it—whatever you can think of.

And the sedimentary rock has become a metamorphic rock! Notice that the discrete sediments have fused into larger swirled or marbled patterns.

(Note: The Metamorphic Snickers Bar activity is fun one to go along with this topic, too.)

Finally, seal up your metamorphic rock in the foil and put it into a pan of hot or boiling water. Let it sit for a minute or two, then carefully unwrap it and swirl the rocks and minerals around with a toothpick or a fork. You can see that all the different minerals have melted and formed a much more homogenous mass (though it still contains all the same ingredients!).

This is your igneous rock! And, you could "weather" all the different rocks into pieces and start the process all over again!

Or you could just let the children eat their "igneous rocks." :)

When we were done, the children all drew illustrations of the rock cycle to demonstrate their understanding of the principles. Some of them used…leaves?

Nice genuine smile, Junie. :)

Rocks and Minerals Unit Study, Version II

click to enlarge

We really like rocks and minerals! We've had units on rocks and minerals, geology, volcanoes, caves, and Yellowstone in the past. Each one has had a little bit different focus, depending on what the children are interested in at the time! It's strange to think that after all the rockhounding we've done, there are still places the little kids have never visited!

Here is my Pinterest Board for this Rocks and Minerals Unit II, and here's the previous Rocks and Minerals Unit we did back in 2013.

There are some good geology-related activities on the Yellowstone Unit board and the more general Geology Unit board, too.

A couple miscellaneous pictures:

Earth's layers flip book. We just winged it (wung it?). But here's another way to make this earth model.

And from our field trip to the Natural History Museum. Always fun stuff to see there!