So this morning I was trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do for a lesson plan today. It had been raining hard all morning and all I could think about was that it was going to be too mucky outside to do lessons outdoors. That's when it struck me, lets do some lessons on muck.I dressed them up in puddle boots and other rain gear and told them we were going to play in the dirt. They were very excited.
So I collected some jars, handed them each there own spoon and told them to fill each jar with dirt from a certain location: the driveway, the garden...
...even the potting soil bag.
Their favourite was from the bottom of the creek. I was pretty happy to find some orange soil as well from beside an ATV trail.
We labeled the jars accordingly, bug helped sound out the words. Then we got home to make some observations. I wrote a scribbly sheet, that I will have to re-do. It went like this:
Where we got the soil from:
Colour:
Rocks:
Objects we found:
Insects:
Wetness:
Smell:
We emptied each jar one at a time into a plastic container and for each type of soil we filled our observation page out. More like I asked them questions then filled it out for them.
Next is to plant a snap pea seed into each jar and water them. Over the next few weeks we will observe which one grows fastest and produces the best pea pod (if any at all). Then we will go back over our observations to decide what kind of soil the pea plant seemed to grow best in.
We were fortunate that today on Dirt Girl World they were covering mulch and dead plant materials in the soil. I also suggest The Magic School Bus Gets Planted if you use videos in your curriculum. Have a great day!
