Magma Experiment: Learning to Record our Observations Like a Scientist

A pan bubbling with water.  Play dough, shaped into a pizza dropped into it.  Watch it begin to warp; now it is cracking, pushing upwards, creating islands, steam escaping, odd bubbles swelling and bursting, vents suddenly splitting open.  Is this what the primitive Earth looked like with volcanoes bursting upward, spilled lava across the landscape?  Is this same thing not happening today?
The recent earthquakes remind us that we sit upon tectonics plates shifting on magma!  The Earth is constantly changing, the land constantly forming.
We recorded our observations and tried to capture these ideas in the diagrams below.

 

Transition Day - Tectonic Plate Shifts

Today we worked in 2020 learning groups. We said 'Nau mai, haere mai' to our 2020 year 4 whānau for our first of two transition mornings.

We are thinking about Aotearoa's unique flora and fauna. This meant we had to do some thinking about how New Zealand got to be where it is.

This activity, where we peeled a mandarin and tacked its skin back on after, allowed us to explore how tectonic plate shifts affect the surface of our sphere - Earth!

 The earth is spherical like the mandarin, although it is difficult to see the roundness of the earth except from space. The peel represents the earth’s crust. The cracks are called faults and it is the shifting of the plates (peel) which causes earthquakes and volcanic activity.

Nik's (2020) Base Group came up with these key ideas:

• The peels (plates) move around on the mandarin (Earth)
• The peels (plates) don't fit back together like a jigsaw after they've broken apart
• In some places the peels (plates) overlap and push up (creating mountains)
• In other places, the peels (plates) have huge, deep gaps (like oceans and their trenches).

We're all very excited to be working together next year, kei te pai i a mātou!

Mount Victoria

We went to Mount Victoria to look at the geology of Wellington.

A big thank you to Deb and Will who spoke to us about how the landscape of Wellington was formed. 

To find out more about the geology of Wellington: 

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/port-nicholson/page-4

Questions to consider and discuss at home: 

• How was my backyard made/formed (Geology)?
• How has our Geology affected our flora and fauna?

Mount Vic Trip from Matariki on Vimeo.

To find out more about tectonic plates: