Augh, now I’m looking at the word earthquake and I’m sure it’s spelled wrong even though my computer says otherwise. Back to the activity. A few months ago we studied earthquakes as part of our earth science studies using Bright Idea’s Press’ CKE earth and space (affiliate link there are more in here, side point LOVE it). It was a fun addition to our science lessons.
Hi! Future Ticia 2025 here, I’m updating the post with more information in here.
Background about earthquakes
As you can imagine there was a lot of excitement in the house when I said get out: LEGOs, blocks, marshmallows, and toothpicks.
First, we did a quick review of a few causes of earthquakes.
Earlier we learned a bit about plate tectonics and how the plates moved against each other. That can be one of the causes of earthquakes, so we reviewed that and then headed off to build earthquake-proof buildings. (Future Ticia 2025 wants to add this is either from the extra printable CD OR from Wondermaps, I highly recommend picking up Wondermaps for history and science it has so many amazing uses).
Earthquake activity supplies needed
earthquake building printable (on my subscriber page, JOIN MY NEWSLETTER)
I got out an old cookie sheet and we built and demolished houses.
First the LEGO buildings. The assignment for each activity is to build one short and wider building and one taller and thin building. Then predict which building will work better for earthquakes (it is really hard to type when you can’t stop sneezing).
But after a rather more difficult earthquake than any real building would be subjected to, the tall skinny one broke in half.
Our block buildings fared considerably worse. The tall, thin building completely fell apart, and the short one was rather shaken up (shaken up, get it?). Sadly, there are no pictures because I attempted to get a video of it, only to discover that the video was upside down, with fingers in front of the lens half the time.
Construction materials matter. Blocks while looking sturdy are not as sturdy as the LEGOs because they can’t lock together. More complicated buildings are not a good idea in earthquake-prone areas, and taller buildings have more problems.
As to our marshmallow dilemma. Two things:
We should have used stale marshmallows, I’ve heard they work better, or gumdrops.
Fancy toothpicks do not work for building with (my poor husband didn’t know why I wanted toothpicks, so he thought they looked “fun”)
But, it was a fun activity, and we did learn a lot from it.
If you’re looking for more earth science ideas, check out my pinterest board, there’s over 100 ideas to try with your kids.
Stale marshmallows would have been good, because they are rigid – and wouldn’t bend with shaking…hmmm…there must be a way incorporate fresh, squishy marshmallows in there as well. Now you’ve got me thinking…I wonder if my kids are up for another challenge? If only we weren’t already going in six different directions at once…sigh…pinning for later, though!
As we were using the non-stale marshmallows all I kept thinking was “Think of all the projects they have successfully made over on Almost Unschoolers with marshmallows.”
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