Make your own soil

Investigate the type and origin of the ingredients of soil with this Earthlearningidea, 'Make your own soil'. Using a little water, pupils mix together the organic and inorganic components of a typical soil. What is missing?

This activity can be used in any lesson about the environment, rocks and landscape, agriculture, gardening or investigations out of doors. More soil activities can be found on our website.

Why is the Dead Sea dead?

The new Earthlearningidea, published today is 'Why is the Dead Sea dead? - measuting salinity'. This involves a simple activity to measure the density of water of different salinities. Pupils can visualise how the measurement of the density of a liquid equates to the commercial measurement of density in situations like that of the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake.
This is one of many activities involving resources; all can be found on our website.

Major upgrade to Earthlearningidea website

Because we now have so many activities, teachers' ideas and video clips on the website, we have been developing better ways of searching for what you want.
The Search engine has been re-written and is now fast and accurate.

We have also re-written the alphabetical index. All activities are now 'clickable' from here and any teachers' ideas (extensions) and video clips are included.
A sample is shown below; please try it out on the website.

Please report any problems to us at info@earthlearningidea.com

Continental split - the opening of the Atlantic Ocean

New ELI today 'Continental split - the opening of the Atlantic Ocean; modelling how continents moved, from Pangaea to today'

Click here for the video clip, created by Cristina Ginés
This activity could be used in any science or geography lesson about sea floor spreading and Wegener's concept of continental drift.
It is one of many activities listed on our website associated with constructive or divergent plate margins in the plate tectonics topic.

Become a fossil hunter and 'Dig up the dinosaur'

'Dig up the dinosaur' was one of our most popular ELIs in November. Pupils dig up buried 'bones' in a systematic manner and reconstruct the skeleton.
The bones can be arranged in the positions in which the creature 'died', and pupils can be encouraged to say how it might have become fossilised. Or, the bones can be jumbled up, to simulate erosion of the remains before burial. Some bones can be cut or broken, and pupils asked to think about the cause of death, such as predation.
This is one of many Earthlearningideas for young children. More can be found on our website.

Magnetic field of the Earth

New ELI today 'Why won't my compass work on the other side of the Equator? - understanding the three dimensional magnetic field of the Earth'. People who take their magnetic compass from one hemisphere to the other are often surprised that it doesn't work in both. The activity uses this finding as a prompt to explain the three-dimensional nature of the Earth's magnetic field.
Visit our website for more ideas about teaching Earth's magnetism.

Testing the strength of rocks

Have you tried the ELI 'Testing rocks - 1 bouncing back testing the strength of rocks'? When engineers build structures such as dams, roads and tunnels, they need to investigate the properties of the rocks beneath and around them. One of the key properties is the strength of the rocks. This normally requires expensive equipment, but we can get quite a good idea by simply dropping a ball bearing onto a flat, cut sample of the rock. The height to which the ball bearing bounces back allows us to compare the relative strength of different rocks.
There are lots more ideas on our website.