Evolution of life in 60 seconds

Have you tried the activity 'Time-line in your own backyard'?

This is part of our 'Evolution' series. We have also published this video clip created by Claire Evans for Darwin 200 to accompanythe activity.

Evolution of the Life on Earth in 60 seconds

Over the next few weeks, we shall be publishing more exciting Earthlearningideas to help teachers with this topic. Next week there will be a game with Beany Beetles to show adaptation and natural selection.

How do we inherit our characteristics?

 Our 200th Earthlearningidea is 'How many Great Great Great Great Grandparents? - finding out how we inherit our characteristics'

This ELI involves a class discussion about numbers of ancestors and how these affect our make-up.
In teaching about evolution, pupils first need to know how organisms inherit their characteristics. This activity helps them to do this. They can then
tackle the idea of Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ for example by trying our next Earthlearningidea, ‘How
many Beany Beetles? - the evolution game: investigating evolution by adaptation and natural selection’. This will be published on January 19th

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.