Beneath our Feet

Our Science topic for term 3 is called Beneath our Feet. In this topic we will:

  • Have opportunities to explore how natural processes and human activity shape our surroundings.
  • Develop our understanding of soils, rocks and landscapes and how they change over time through hands-on activities and  investigations.
  • Investigate factors that affect the erosion of soils.

This is a MASSIVE topic with a lot of hands on investigations and experiments which will involve using a variety of equipment and even getting a little dirty with the soil!

We began our lesson with listing as many words we could think of that related to the words soil, rock and landscape. Here is what our class came up with:

mud                                  mining                          quartz                          sapphire

sand                                 fertilizer                        dirt                                fools gold

diamond                          large                              stones                           compost

gold                                 heavy                            pebbles                         sandstone

caves                                ruby                              rough                           Earth

Zebra Rock                      Devils Marble              Uluru                            mulch

cobblestone                     copper                         limestone                       chalk

jade                                  emerald                        boulder                        beach 

iron                                  opal                              rainforest                       crystal   

coal                                  ore 

 

These have been added to our class word wall and we will continue to add these throughout the term as we learn new words and ideas.

Next we worked in small groups and were given a map of the school and 9 different photos of other soils, rocks and different landscapes that are located around the school grounds. We had to find where Mrs. Baldwin had taken each photo and answer the following questions:

  1. What does the rock or soil feel like?
  2. What colours can you see?
  3. Describe the landscape of each picture eg: slopes, hills, bumpy, vegetation etc.

 

Here are the photos that were taken

IMG_7858

 

This was a lot of fun and quite a challenge at times, particularly with finding one of the rocks. This allowed us to look closely at some of the rocks and soils that are in our local area and begin thinking about the properties and features using some describing words.

IMG_7838 IMG_7839 IMG_7843 IMG_7848 IMG_7849 IMG_7840

Our next step is to collect a soil sample and rock from another location and bring it to school. We will spend some time studying these closely and perhaps finding out what soil types and rocks we have in our local environment.

What did you enjoy most about the treasure hunt activity?

What did you find that was interesting with either a rock or soil in one of the photos?

Can you share one fact that you know about rocks, soils or landscapes?

13 thoughts on “Beneath our Feet

  1. Dear ms baldwin what I enjoyed the most about the acctitvity is that we got to go all over the school and got to look for stuff all over the school with our friends all gotmtomeork out some thing and it was very fun

  2. Dear Mrs Baldwin,

    The thing I enjoyed most about the treasure hunt was we had to go around the school to find them and also my group found all of the things and also the hardest one was the rock at the year 6-7 building.

  3. Dear Mrs Baldwin
    The thing that I know about rock is that they go back millions of years and that they are all different shapes and sizes and there colours. The biggest crystal that i know is 11 metres we even use a type of rock called coal and use it for cooking.
    From Jake

  4. Dear miss baldwin ‘
    I enjoyed the treasure hunt because we got to find the places and i like doing treasure hunts they are fun . Science is fun because you learn new things and you can do investagations . And I like the word wall in the class because you can learn new words from the word wall . From jess m

  5. Dear, mrs baldwin I enjoyed the treasure hunt most because it was really fun and it was a little easy with pictures because we only knew some.

    Dear, mrs baldwin I find interesting that the 5th picture a rock looked completely different in the picture to real life. From kain

  6. Dear mrs Baldwin,
    What I enjoyed was looking at the photos and finding out where they were taken.
    Soil can come in all shapes and colours.

  7. Dear Mrs Baldwin,
    I enjoyed doing the treasure hunt because you made it hard to find the things like the back of the oval ones because I got mixed up like a lot of other people did.
    I know that when erosion happens that some of the sand dunes get smaller.

  8. Dear Mrs Baldwin,
    The most fun thing about doing the treasure hunt was finding and researching objects in the school.
    One fact that I know about rocks is that Uluru in NT(Northern Territory) is the biggest rock in Australia.

    From Jackson😄😃😀😊😉

  9. Dear Miss Baldwin,

    The thing I enjoyed most about the treasure hunt activity would be using a map of the school and runing from area to area.

    The thing I found intresting about picture 5 was that the rock looked like a pice of liter.

  10. Dear mrs Baldwin,
    What I enjoyed about the treasure hunt was finding the path at the year 6 and 7 playground because we were the 1st ones to find it and everyone except my group was wondering where it was . What I found interesting about the soils was that they were not just brown they were lots of diferant colours it was weird

    From Piper

  11. Dear Mrs Baldwin,

    What I enjoyed mostly about the treasure hunt was that you got to run around the whole school and look for things with your friends . I also liked completing the challenge it wasn’t meant to be competition but we tried to make it fun and it was lots of fun.It was also a pretty hard so that made it fun.

    I liked the part next to the Loise Moss because it had all different colours and texturs and I could see my brother through the window and see what he was doing while I was waiting for Kayne finishing off his writing and while we did that one we found another one which made it quicker.

    Ingenious rocks are created when a molten lava is cooled and solicited that’s all I know about rocks.

  12. Dear Mrs Baldwin,
    The thing I enjoyed most about the treasure hunt was getting into groups and looking around the school for soils, rocks and landscapes.
    I found the rock near the Japanese room interesting because it look like a sponge.

    From Jasmine😄😄😄😊

  13. Dear Miss Baldwin,

    The thing I enjoyed most about the treasure hunt was using the map of the school and having to run around to check if the photos where there.

    The thing I found intresting was in picture 5 the rock looked like a pice of rubbish.

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