Diving into the Desert

We are studying different habitats in science. We started with the desert. We did two centers today dealing with sand. Yesterday we touched on sand dunes, today we delved more deeply into this concept. Today we learned about 4 specific types of dunes. The children got to try to create these dunes using sand and straws. It is hard to see but on the blue paper is an example of what these dunes look like and on the tan paper (written in blue) is how to make the dunes. Below are pictures of the kids hard at work! We learned new words today like windward side, leeward side, slumping, and saltation.

Here is our second center. This had more to do with the concept of weathering and erosion. The students used hand lens to look at a piece of sand paper. Then they had to rub a piece of smooth chalk on the sandpaper. By doing this, the sandpaper left rough scratches in the chalk which was meant to show how sand pelting rocks caused weathering and erosion. The kids had a blast with both centers!