Main text or spine-1001 Facts About Earth by Cally Hall

We divided our study in the following subjects:

• Earth in space, continents, crust, earth layers, and plates.
•  Mountains, volcanoes, and geysers.
• Rocks and minerals.
• Erosion, caves, glaciers, valleys
• Oceans, rivers
• Atmosphere, climate

Some projects we've done include making a globe.  It was messy and time consuming, but the kids loved and and it taught them about the continents, hemispheres, and the equator in a concrete, hands-one way.  We also made a volcano.  We made our own rock collection from rocks gathered outside, and classified them according to their hardness and other characteristics.  We made peanut brittle to simulate igneous rock (the sugar melts at high temps, similar to magma), and a sandwich with different layers to show sedimentary rocks.

Books I've used to support each topic are:

• The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth
• Earth Sciece for Every Kid by Janice VanCleave
• Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils by Krista West
• Let's Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans
• It Could Still be a Rock by Allan Fowler