Geology Crafts

Free Layers of the Earth Worksheets

May 13, 2016 By Valerie Mcclintick Leave a Comment

Learning about the Layers of the Earth is always fun for children. Today, I’ve got some new printable resources available for you on our sister site HomeschoolClipart.com

Layers of the Earth Printables

I’ve created all sorts of charts, worksheets and activity pages you can use in a Science notebook or journal:

Layers of the Earth

Coloring Pages
Notebooking Journal Pages
Color Coded Charts
Labeling Worksheet
Nomenclature Cards (Color & BW)

Print all these Layers of the Earth Printables here on HomeschoolClipart.com

You can even grab the clipart to make your own worksheets (for personal use only).

Find more Science Worksheets Here

Try this Layers of the Earth Crafty with Play Dough

Physical Map Collage

These fantastic maps are not only fun to make, but they are a great way to learn about your state or country’s terrain. This would be a great activity to teach children about the physical properties of land, as well as how to read a physical map

Materials:

Paper Mache Recipe
Newspaper
Mixing Bowl
Paint (blue, green, brown, white)
Paintbrushes

Suggest Resources for a Unit Study:

Art Project Tutorial:

Step 1

Find a good picture of a Physical Map. Draw the outline of the state or country you'll be making.

Step 2

Find some old magazines and tear out some of the colors you'll use for the map. (Substitute bright colors for extra fun!)

Step 3

Set up a glue station for children to dip their brushes

Step 4

Tear up different colors of the magazines and place them in the right places on the map. Using different hues of a color and layering really make the map look more realistic.

All Done

Find the letters to make a title for your map, or even add a map key at the bottom.

Paper Mache Globe Craft

This project is perfect for anytime you’re teaching children about the world they live in. It’s a little messy, but well worth the investment!

Materials:

Paper Mache Recipe
Newspaper
Mixing Bowl
Paint (blue, green, brown, white)
Paintbrushes

Suggest Resources for a Unit Study:

Art Project Tutorial:

Step 1

Choosing a balloon: Try to find a punching bag balloon because of it's size and shape when blown up. (Dollar Tree)

Step 2

Blow up the balloon, and tie off the end.

Step 3

To keep the balloon steady, you can use a small mixing bowl as a base. Tape if necessary.

Step 4

Cut up a pile of newspaper strips. I like them longer better so I cut vertically

Step 5

Mix up your Paper Mache and begin to cover your balloon with layers of paper.

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Step 6

Once you're entire balloon is covered, let it dry. This could take a few of hours

Step 7

Draw in the continents. Older children can do it on their own, younger children will need a bit of guidence.

Step 8

As you draw in the continents, point out the various places where one ends and the other meets.

Step 9

Now for the fun! Start to paint your continents GREEN.

Step 10

Then let the children feel the globe. Can they find any mountain ranges?

Step 11

Go through each continent and paint in some Mountains (BROWN) where ever the children feel them.

Step 12

Now it's time for the oceans! Mix up some BLUE paint and fill in the rest! Older children can use different hues of blue to represent currents as well.

All Done

Once dry you can add in the names of the continents an oceans, draw in an equator, or even wind currents!

Rocks & Minerals

Children love to learn about rocks and minerals because they get so much “hands on” learning about a topic they can easily extend with life experience. Here you’ll find some suggestions for helping children explore the differences between different and similarities between various rocks and minerals.

Materials:

Variety of Rocks
(we purchased a kit)
Printable Rocks & Minerals Worksheet
Colored Pencisl
Scale
Nail & Streak Tile
Ruler and String

Suggest Resources for a Unit Study:

Art Project Tutorial:

Materials

Gather a variety of rocks. Variety of Rocks (we purchased a kit) Printable Rocks & Minerals Worksheet Colored Pencisl Scale Nail & Streak Tile Ruler and String

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Station 1

Pick a rock! I set out all the different rocks the kids to pick and choose from! You can number the rocks so that children can easily see the name of the rock and write in on their experiment sheet.

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Station 2

Experiment sheet. I printed up a bunch of these and left them next to some colored parts of the sheet, and can trace or draw a picture of their rock with the colored pencils. other features.

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Station 3

The next station was a learning station, where the kids could look up more information about their rocks. This was filled with different library books with photos so they could find the names of their rocks as well. (I didn't label a few of the "pretty" rocks

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Station 4

I set up our Pan Balance Scale and layed see how much their rocks weighed in grams

Station 5

Just for some extra fun I pulled our Diet Scale (Walmart) and let them also weigh their rocks in ounces. This wasn't very accurate but it was fun nonetheless!

Station 6

Our final station had a magnifying glass, a nail, and a streak plate. Children used the nail to see if they could scratch the rock, and the streak plate to see if they could write with the rock. I also laid out a ruler and some string for them to take measurements. Then they recorded all their information on their sheet, turned them in and started the process again on a different rock! Lots of fun and lots of learning!

Volcano Craft

What better way to finish off your volcano unity study, then by making your very own errupting volcano! This is a great project for children of all ages, and provides a fantastic opportunity for children to try their hand at presenting their work.

Materials:

Salt Dough
(recipe here)
Baking Soda
Vinegar
Paing
Shallow Container

Suggest Resources for a Unit Study:

Art Project Tutorial:

Step 1

Make yourself a big ole pile of Salt dough.

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Step 2

Find a small cylindrical container that you no longer need.

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Step 3

Build your volcano around your container.

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Step 4

Set your volcano aside to dry...maybe overnight.

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Step 5

Find a shallow box and paint a landscape in it.

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Step 6

Once the paint is dry it's time to set of your volcano! Pour a tablespoon of baking soda into the container.

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Step 7

Mix vinagar with red food coloring (because it's lava!)

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Step 8

Slowly pour your vinagar into the container.

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Step 9

Stand back and watch your volcano erupt!

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Step 10

Let it erupt and continue to pour in the vinegar for multiple bursts! Here's our erupting volcano!

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Fossil Craft

Do you have a geology planned for your homeschool classroom. Or maybe you have a Dinosaur Theme Preschool Birthday Party to plan for? Either one would be a wonderful opportunity to try our DIY Fossils Project with your chidlren. Making your own fossils is great fun, and really not as “troublesome,” or “messy” as you might think! This craft really drives home the point in how fossils are formed and leaves children with a lasting impression!!

Make Your Own Fossils!

Materials:

Plaster of Paris
Tinfoil
Small objects to fossilize!

Step 1: Making a Fossil Cast

Using your tinfoil, you’ll want to crumple and create a small circular container (as shown in the upper right-hand corner). You’ll need a tinfoil container for each fossil you want to create.

Next, you’ll shape your clay to fit inside the tinfoil container, as shown in the center of the photo. Your tinfoil container should be raised up higher than the clay.

Next, you’ll want to make impressions into your clay. You can do this using a variety of plastic children’s toys. Try insects, dinosaurs etc….and really push into the clay so that each tiny detail is transfered over.

Using toys that have texture or design to them will make for an extra detailed fossil. Just be sure all the little parts are carefully pressed into the clay.

Step 2: Making Plaster Fossils

In a separate container, you’ll want to mix your plaster of paris according to your specific product directions. Obviously, this is a job for Mom, Dad, or the teacher. Always carefully supervise your students when using these types of materials.

Once the plaster is mixed, you can use a small spoon to carefully fill in over the top of your clay impressions. Adding small amounts of plaster with each scoop ensures the plaster reaches inside the tiny areas in your impression.

You can use the back of the spoon to smooth out the top and fill in any areas that might need more coverage.

Once your casts are filled with plaster it’s time to wait for them to harden. This can take near an hour, so set them aside somewhere safe and come back to them in about 60 minutes.

Step 3: Reveal Your Fossils

After you are sure they are hardened, carefully peel back the tinfoil to reveal the clay and plaster. The plaster will be stuck to the clay, so you’ll want to carefully peel that back as well. Slow and steady so as not to break off any small areas.

Wow! Take a peek inside as your plaster cast! This fossil turnout out amasingly detailed, look at all the lines of texture on this spider!

And here is a peek at how our butterfly turned out! How pretty is that? If you look closely you can see all the lines in the body and wings. Plaster of Paris is fantastic for picking up all the intricate details.

And check out our millipede and all those tiny little legs!

Making your own fossils is a simple, yet exciting activity for students. If you are using this activity for educational purposes these would work well for any geology, biology, or archeology unit. If you are using this for a preschool discovery bin or a dinosaur themed birthday party, these would be fun to bury in a small sensory tub filled with sand for students to unearth and discover!

Landform Diorama Craft

Many children are visual learners and the use of models is a great way to introduce important information. Use this fun model of the earths layers to learn all about the different components of our wonderful world!

Materials:

Empty Cardboard Box
Green Construction Paper
Play Dough, Sandpaper, Paint, Moss
Labels w/Marker

Suggest Resources for a Unit Study:

Art Project Tutorial:

Step 1

Lay down some green construction paper in your empty box. You can paint the bottom as well.

Step 2

Use your play dough to make a mountain

Step 3

Using your fingers press into the mountain down the side to make a groove

Step 4

Paint the top of the mountain white

Step 5

Use light blue to show the melted snow trickling down the mountain sid

Step 6

Pinch together the sides of your mountain around the groove so that the trickle looks more inside.

Step 7

Draw out our stream and turn it into a river, then the ocean. Add in a couple of playdough hills.

Step 8

Find some moss to make your forests and glue them in the box near your mountain.

Step 9

Here's what we have so far.

Step 10

Use some more playdough to make an island in the middle of your ocean.

Step 11

Use sandpaper to make a bit of desert in the corner. Our paper is white so we painted it tan.

Step 12

Glue it in the corner and brush a little dry ground around it.

Step 13

Get out some sticky labels and write the names of the different landforms you created.

Step 14

Put your diorama on display! These were done for my KG and 2nd grader, but older children can certainly add in many more landforms.

Layers of the Earth Craft

Many children are visual learners and the use of models is a great way to introduce important information. Use this fun model of the earths layers to learn all about the different components of our wonderful world!

Materials:

Play Dough
(Recipe Here)
Food Coloring
Knife

Suggest Resources for a Unit Study:

Art Project Tutorial:

Prep

Make yourself some of our super soft playdough. Then use your food coloring to dye it in amounts above.

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Step 1

Form your red into a small ball.

Step 2

Put it in the center of your orange playdough.

Step 3

Roll up the orange so that you don't smash the shape of the red ball.

Step 4

You can pinch and move the dough as you need to. Sometimes there will be too much as well.

Step 5

Reform your ball very gently.

Step 6

Add a layer of yellow around the orange ball.

Step 7

Now add your brown layer.

Step 8

Then finish with your blue layer.

Step 9

Use your green playdough to make some land shapes.

Step 10

Take a knife and cut a wedge from of the earth in model form! Children can make a key to display on the paper plate!

Step 11

Red = Inner Core Orange = Outer Core Yellow = Mantle Brown = Crust Blue & Green = Water & Land

Step 12

Children can set up their own visual in this way for Science fairs.

Geology Crafts for Kids

A lot of the featured crafts for our geology unit are actually activities! Children can explore the world around us with hands on activities and experiments. Come along and make an erupting volcano, a land form diorama, and a model of the Earth’s layers. Get cracking with geodes and discover the beautiful secrets hidden inside these plain looking “rocks.” Make fossils, explore and study shells, then set up a complete Rock and Mineral Discovery center. For children who are especially interested in this topic I recommend looking to see if there is a rock hounding group nearby. Here in the pacific northwest there is a great group

Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:

Layers of the Earth

Many children are visual learners and the use of models is a great way to introduce important information. Use this fun model of the earths layers to learn all about the different components of our wonderful world!

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Break Your Own Geode

Handy with a hammer? Break open these seemingly lackluster rocks to reveal the beautiful crystals inside. These special rocks are inspirational for all types of lessons with your children!

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Landform Diorama

What better way to learn about landforms then to make your own diorama featuring the different ones that you study! These make fantastic end of the unit, or presentation projects.

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Make Your Own Fossils

Making fossils is great fun, and really not as "troublesome," or "messy" as you might think! This craft really drives home the point in how fossils are formed and leaves children with a lasting impression!

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Make an Erupting Volcano

This is probably the best Science Fair Project EVER! Children love to mold these volcanos (ours is made from salt dough) into shape then them make them erupt over and over.

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Rocks & Minerals Discovery Day

Children love to explore and learn about all the amazing rocks and minerals they discover. Here are some hands-on activities and ideas you can use to make a fantastic Rocks and Minerals Discovery Day!

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Rocks & Minerals Science Sheet

We used these rocks and minerals worksheets on our discovery day. These are great for children to store information about size, color, shape, and weight.

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Sorting Seashells

Grab your pail and shovel and head to the beach for some seashell collecting. (or in our case order a bag online!) Then open up your own store in the sand. Use our printable sorting cards or encourage your children to paint their own signs.

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Sorting Seashell Printable Mats

Children love sorting sea shells. Simply sorting them by shape makes a great activity for preschool aged. I made these so that my kiddos could have fun aged children, and the older ones love to learn the different names of all the shells. I found so many different "names' for the shells, you're welcome to change them as needed

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Landform Diorama

May 3, 2011 By Valerie Mcclintick 4 Comments

We are wrapping up our lesson on Landforms!
We have been using Beginning Geography which took us though basic map reading, animal habitats and landforms. I can’t say enough how much I loved this e-book, and how much my children loved doing “maps” during school.

This week we decided to put all of our knowledge to the test by making 3-d models of the different landforms we studied.

And of course I took photos and jotted down instructions if you want to make your own!

This was a great way to wrap up our unit and prepare us for our next one: The 7 Continents!

And we are headed Down Under first,
so stay tuned for some AUS-ome crafts!

Geology Crafts

March 26, 2011 By Valerie Mcclintick 1 Comment

I know you’re just dying to know what we made
with all this beautiful playdough!

I meant to post this sooner so as not to make you
wait in anticipation so long!

A few weeks back we learned about the layers of the earth
and this clay made it possible for us to make our own model!

Didn’t it turn out wonderful?

As part of our study we also made an erupting volcano:

And then later on we visited our local Rock Museum
where we snagged these exciting beauties,
and took the hammer to them…here’s how it all went down:

The kiddos were really excited to find the crystals within,
and have been coveting them ever since!

(If you want to break your own, try this kit from GeoCentral)

I posted some quick tutorials on the main site,
under our Geology Crafts section!

And Stay Tuned for some fun Geography Activities
as we revisit the Continents & Oceans next month!

She Sells Seashells….

April 18, 2010 By Valerie Mcclintick 4 Comments

….by the seashore:

Yeah….not the beach….but even better cause I didn’t have to deal with sand stuck in their every nook and cranny!

The kids had a great time making signs, and pricing their goods:

They didn’t even know they were learning:

It was the perfect day at the beach.

Click here for fun ways to learn using seashells!

Rocks and Minerals Discover Day!

March 30, 2010 By Valerie Mcclintick Leave a Comment

Rocks and Minerals homeschool lesson

Last week I set up this Rocks and Minerals Discovery table for the kids to explore with! Let me tell you that they L-O-V-E-D it, and it was hard to wrap it up and move on to the next thing. (Don’t you just hate when you have to pry them away from learning in order to get them to eat something?)

I used a few different kits that I picked up at the local teacher store, as well as our local museum. If you’re looking to pick up a kit for your classroom, I think the Minerals kit was better because it came with a streak plate and a nail to test the rocks with. However, the more “fancy” rocks like the ones in the first photo are the ones we picked up at the Museum, and you can snag a nice kit of some here online.

Here are some photos of the different stations that I set up:

Click here for the rest of them, including details for each one.

I also made up this handy Rocks and Minerals printable to keep track of all the information we collected about the rocks. These print 2 to a page so you can easily have a bunch on hand for your kiddos to fill out.

And CurrClick has a Rocks and Minerals Flash Card Set for Free!

Stay tuned for more Rocks and Minerals Activities!

Make Your Own Fossils

March 20, 2010 By Valerie Mcclintick 5 Comments

We’ve been slowly fazing in some Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils to our science lessons, and this was one of the activities that we just had to do!

So...here is a super simple way for children to make their own fossils.

I had no idea that Plaster of Paris could be so easy to work with!

(I had envisions of cement mixers, inhaling nasty white powder, and crusty rock formations on my best spatula)

However with a little prep work, None of that occurred, and we had a fantastic time making fossils!

And apparently our excavation site was somewhere in the Asian territory of a remote place called “ANIHC”

Too Cute Right?

Click Here for full Photo Instructions!