Here’s how our homeschool family spent a portion of our year learning about Earth Science.

Materials

The Good and The Beautiful Geology Unit Study

We loosely (very loosely) followed the Good and the Beautiful’s Geology Unit study. We found that there is a plethora of info out there about Earth Science and had a hard time sticking to just one resource. There were also so many hands on ways to learn that I found myself more heavily leaning on those for this unit study.

National Geographic Advent Calendar

Every day the kids were able to open a new rock from this National Geographic Rock Advent Calendar. It also came with a chart to help the kids identify the rock they received.

National Geographic Earth Science Kit

We used this National Geographic Earth Science kit to do multiple Earth Science related experiments. It was awesome. 10 out of 10 recommend. We grew crystals, molded and painted volcanoes and then set them off, made tornados and explored rock specimens. My kids loved it all.

Jake painting the volcano that he had previously molded out of plaster of paris.

Erupting our volcanoes!

We used Homeschool Shares free printable Volcano Worksheets to go along with this activity.

National Geographic Break Open Geodes

We used this National Geographic Geode kit to break open some geodes and learn more about what they are and how they are created.

Books

Below are some of our favorite books we read while doing this Earth Science Unit Study.

The Magic School Bus Rocky Road Trip Chapter Book was perfect for our unit study. We used this along with Amy Lee’s free Rocky Road Trip Lap Book and the kids each had fun creating their own lap book about the information they had been learning.

Videos

Below are some of our favorite videos we watched while doing this Earth Science Unit Study.

We watched these videos when learning about the three main categories of rocks and the rock cycle

Then we followed it up by doing this experiment about the rock cycle with starburst candy. We used this video as while as a blog post by Little Bins Little Hands to help guide us while doing this activity.

I had the kids make one of each type of rock then label them. We used the rock cyle chart from THEHOMESCHOOLSCIENCTIST.com to help us understand the activity better.

This entire post about the rock cycle from THEHOMESCHOOLSCIENCTIST.com was also used when explaining the three types of rocks and the rock cycle.

Field Trips

We have two field trips planned this summer that should help reinforce all we learned about Earth Science. One to the Desert of Maine in Freeport Maine and the other to the Maine Gem and Mineral Museum in Bethel Maine.