Kitchen Geology

Grade: Elementary

Objective: Students will learn more about the composition of the Earth through a series of hands-on sensory activities.

Materials: Twix bar, hard-boiled egg, apple, crackers, bread, world maps, BBC Plate Tectonic Activity

Today we:
-Talked about the definition of "geology" breaking the world down to "geo" earth, "ology" study
-Looked at a world map for evidence of continental drift
-Completed BBC's Plate Tectonic Activity
-Cut into an apple, discussing it as a model for the crust, mantle, and core of the earth
-Used a hard-boiled egg as a model for the crust, mantle, and core of the earth, cracking the egg-shell to help us imagine Earth's plates
-Completed a variation of the "Discovery Center" Layers of the Earth Activity  using a Twix bar
-Discussed the locations of plate boundaries and the geologic activity that often accompanies plate boundaries
-Examined the "convergent" boundary west of us in Washington, demonstrating the subduction caused by the meeting of the dense thin oceanic plate (modeled through a cracker) and the thicker airier continental plate (modeled through a slice of bread.)  In our model we slipped a cracker underneath a piece of bread to show how the oceanic plate pushes the continental plate up, causing mountain ranges like the North Cascades