Soil Collections

We started our Rocks and Soil unit last week. We started the unit with SOIL.  We watched the Brainpop,Jr video clip about soil and brainstormed a web of things we already knew about it (it's dirty, it can be different colors...) then it was time to do some up close scientific research!

The kiddos made a "soil collection plan". They decided what tools we needed, how we could gather our samples, and where we would look on our school grounds to collect the samples.

Then they brought in the needed supplies...trowels, small shovels, gardening gloves, little buckets... And we set off to gather our samples.

Next we headed back inside to make some up close observations! We carefully (as in maybe got soil ALL over the place and had a big ol clean up party afterwards) glued some of the samples onto a soil collection sheet and recorded our observations. 

Then we met back together and shared our findings. We spent nearly 4 complete class sessions on soil. We took notes in our science journals, read non-fiction soil books, and they read and illustrated their own SOIL emergent readers.  This upcoming week we'll shift our focus to ROCKS...now that our little scientists know THAT'S where soil comes from. More on that soon! 

You can find all of the soil and rock activities, recording sheets, emergent readers and more in our "Rockin' it in K: Rocks and Soil" unit!