When studying natural disasters and landforms with your homeschooled child, information about earthquakes should be included. What better way to study the effects of earthquakes than creating one with a science experiment in your living room? This article covers some of the basic information a homeschool lesson plan on earthquakes should cover. Also find a simple science project or experiment to do that demonstrates how earthquakes affect the earth’s land masses.
Earthquake Lesson Plan – Information
Before beginning the earthquake science project, give basic information about earthquakes in the homeschool lesson plan. The student should understand that earthquakes are caused by the movement of earth’s tectonic plants and faults in rock strata far beneath the surface. Teach earthquake vocabulary in your homeschool lesson plan. Have your child define and understand words like epicenter, seismic waves, and richter scale.
Earthquake Science Project – Experiments
This experiment will show how earth’s crust is disturbed by both pushing and pulling movements of the earth’s plates. Begin with a large sheet of paper. Newspaper will do. Sprinkle a half inch layer of soil on top. You can also use sand or grains of rice or other small particles. The soil, sand, or rice is used to depict the earth’s crust.
First, to demonstrate what happens when the plates push into each other, have your homeschool child put his hands on the sides of the newspaper and push them together. Then, continue the homeschool lesson plan science project by having the student pull apart on the newspaper to show what happens if the tectonic plates separate. The edges of the paper can also be moved in opposite directions. This demonstrates what happens at fault lines where the plates move in different ways.
Another simple science experiment on earthquakes to do requires the homeschool student to build a house with blocks on a table. All you need to do is shake or hit the table from below to see the effects of an earthquake. Experiment with hitting the bottom of the table different distances away from your block house. This shows how buildings are affected both close and far away from the epicenter of the quake.
Besides doing the science experiment about earthquakes, it is important to impart other understanding to your homeschool student. There are several find documentaries about earthquakes, both the science behind them and the human impact, to watch. Learning about how earthquakes change the earth is important. Imparting and understanding of how they affect people is just as vital for a well-rounded homeschool lesson plan.
