Earth and Sky - Erosion

Focus: The shape of the landscape changes over time due to the erosive forces of wind, water, gravity, weathering and ice as well as human activity.

Puppets (Ricky Rock and Little Ricky, Billy Boulder and Little Billy, Rushing River)

Materials Checklist

Puppet Show (puppets, script, water spray bottle)
Shaping the Land (slide show, projector, screen, or pictures of different places where erosion has occurred)
Splash (large jelly-roll pan or cookie sheet, tablespoon, flour, eyedropper or baby bottle with nipple, water, optional soil, pebbles, rock)
Rock and Roll (plastic containers with tight-fitting lids, washed stones, water, measuring cup, clean jar, smooth river rocks and/or beach glass)
Swept Away (uncooked rice, rocks, pieces of wood, shallow baking pans, plastic wrap, straws, optional pennies)
Slipping Soil (plastic dish basins, soil or sand, sprinkling watering can, water, rocks, hay, twigs, other natural material)
Erosion Hunt (clipboards, pencils, maps of schoolyard)
If I Were a Fish (cards with animal pictures - optional for younger children)

Supplementary Reference Materials (Slide show scripts: Grades K-2, Grades 3-6)

Additional Reading/Resources
Shaping the Earth: Erosion, by Sandra Downs, 21st Century Books, 2000.

For Younger Children
Many of the activities in VINS's new Small Wonders book can be used in ELF, too. To find appropriate activities for children aged 3-6, click here.

Teaching suggestions

Slide Show
If you show the slides on a white board in the classroom instead of a screen, you can draw on the board over the projected slide to show what the outline of the mountain range might have looked like before it was eroded. Or where the roadside was, or…

Puppet Show
You might want to add a sign that reads “Many Years Later” as a prop. Also, give the Billy and Ricky pebbles gray hair and gravelly voices.

Splash
Try this activity on soil, pebbles, sand as well as the flour.

Children can use an eye dropper or ear syringe instead of the baby bottle dropper, if you'd prefer.

Start by holding the dropper up high so kids can see how far the flour moves with this type of force.

If you want to focus on making rivers and ponds, start with more flour – more like a mountain, and watch what happens as more precipitation reaches “land.”

Rock & Roll
Use 3 clear plastic jars so each group can leave their cloudy water and watch the sediment settle out. Pouring the water through a coffee filter quickly shows the amount of particles.

Gatorade bottles work well, as do plastic peanut butter or mayonnaise jars.

Some groups compared different types of rocks to see how they fared under this type of erosion (e.g. granite vs. sandstone).

Swept Away
Have younger children practice blowing out through the straws first by blowing a stream of air onto the palm of their hand. Feel the force? (this may help them remember to blow out not suck rice in!)

If you use disposable aluminum roasting pans, you can poke the holes for the straws in the sides of the pan so that when kids blow through the straw it mimics how wind blows across (not directly down on) a landscape. Then you can challenge the class to end up with the biggest dune they can make as a group (or for each group to blow away the previous group's dune and build another).

One volunteer uses a 9 x 13” pan and pours in a mix of: mixed birdseed, sesame seeds, popcorn, beans, pennies, rocks of a few sizes from small to large pebbles. She puts a long hill of this across the pan, about 2” from one end, and has students blow toward the far end, gently and steadily. The others in the small group watch carefully. Then they look at what gets blown first and farthest. The kids find three things that affect blowing: light or heavy, small or large, sticking up or lying flat.

You might want to bury cleaned chicken bones under the rice, like finding dinosaur bones in the desert.

Guiding Questions for this activity might include: when blowing toward the rice, what happens? Where does rice build up to make drifts or dunes or move away to make dips and hollows? What effect does a change in “wind” direction have? How does this compare to the way wind might erode and change the landscape in the desert, on a sandy beach, or on a mountaintop?

Slipping Soil
It's fun to add small Monopoly (TM) houses to the tray and challenge the students to keep the soil and house from slipping away.

You might want to measure the dirt ahead of time so that each group has an equal amount.

You can modify this activity to have the different groups compare different materials for their effectiveness in erosion control: grass OR rocks OR sticks, etc.

For older children, try having the kids think about the cost o preventing erosion on their slope. One class divided up their kids into groups and each group had a banker, a planner, and 2 landscapers. Each group had a budget of $100 to spend on their project (Monopoly money). Sticks cost 4 for $5, one largish rock cost $5, etc.

Sharing Circle
One thing I learned about erosion is _ . or, One interesting thing about erosion is __ .

Have children work in pairs to brainstorm a list of animals that might benefit from erosion or deposition in some way. Then the pairs choose their favorite example from their list to share with the class. For example: bats use caves created by erosion, trout use gravel beds deposited in rivers, bank swallows nest in eroding banks, rattlesnakes and mountain goats depend on rocky talus slopes for protection from predators, peregrines nest on cliffs, etc.

Extensions With older students, you will want to include discussion of deposition as well as erosion and how these two processes shape landscapes.

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas:

• Erosion is the process by which rocks and soil are worn away, carried off, and deposited elsewhere on the earth.
• The most important agents of erosion are water, glaciers, wind, the pull of gravity, human activity and weathering by chemical or mechanical processes.
• The force of erosion creates soil by wearing away rocks down to fragments.
• Erosion shapes the land and smoothes surfaces.
• Whenever vegetation is removed, soil becomes vulnerable to the action of erosion. Erosion control methods can help to curtail the loss of soil.

Vocabulary: Erosion, Glacier, Gravity, Weathering, Abrasion

Skills:

• Active listening to define erosion and to understand some of the causes and effects of erosion.
• Comparing and contrasting through modeling the effect of different agents of erosion.
• Investigating through simulation how wind helps shape landscapes.
• Making a model and experimenting with various materials and designs to investigate ways to limit or control erosion.
• Observing and recording signs of erosion in the schoolyard.
• Discussing the impact of erosion on animals' lives.

Grade Expectations
Grades PK-K Water and wind can change size, shape and patterns of rocks and soil.

Grades 1-2 (S47) Rocks and soil on the surface of the earth change over time when exposed to wind and water.

Grades 3-4 (S47) Waves, wind, water and ice shape and reshape the earth's land surface by eroding rock and soil in some areas and depositing them in others.

Grades 5-6 (S47) Change brought about by the force of erosion may happen very slowly or quickly, depending on the strength and intensity of wind, water and other weathering agents.

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