Soil

Touch and feel different soil material. Discuss the difference in color, texture and location. Identify the layer each comes from.

Draw a diagram of the layers of soil giving definitions and descriptions of each layer.

Visit this State Soils interactive and compare/contrast soil found in different areas of the United States. Provide details, descriptions and create a unique way to share your findings.

Analyze the grains of material is different samples of soil. Sort topsoil, sand, clay, humus, and rock.

Dig up several soil samples from various sites. Carefully, lay them on trays. Dig down to retrieve at least 6 inches of material. Measure the humus layer and the topsoil layer. Make a chart of the different samples.

Grow plants of the same species in different types of soil. Measure and compare their height, weight, and amount of water provided. Be sure that they all receive the same amount of water and light for this experiment to work. Compare the results by making a chart of the progress of each plant.

Sunlight warms Earth's surface. Examples of Earth's surface could include sand, soil, rocks, and water.

Living and non-living things have distinct characteristics.

Use a chart or Venn diagram to sort objects or pictures into living and not-living items.

Examples of solutions could include different designs for using shrubs, grass, and trees to hold back the land.

Some events happen quickly and others very slowly, over a time period longer than one can observe. Examples of events and timescales could include earthquakes, which happen quickly, and erosion of rocks, which occurs slowly.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places.

The emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

Rainfall helps to shape the land and affects the types of living things found in a region. Water, ice, wind, living organisms, and gravity break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller particles and move them around.

Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may be then processed by the animal's brain. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions.

Animals have various body systems with specific functions for sustaining life: skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, muscular, digestive, etc.

Earth's major systems are the geosphere (rock, soil, and sediments), the hydrosphere (water and ice), the atmosphere (air), and the biosphere (living things including humans). These systems interact in multiple ways to affect Earth's surface materials and processes.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there.

Examples of environmental changes could include changes in land characteristics, water distribution, temperature, food, and other organisms.

The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants. Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Some organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, break down dead organisms (both plants or plant parts and animals) and therefore operate as "decomposers." Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil.

Matter cycles between the air and soil and among plants, animals, and microbes as these organisms live and die. Organisms obtain gases and water from the environment, and release waste matter back into the environment.

Matter that is not food (air, water, decomposed materials in soil) is changed by plants into matter that is food.

Emphasis is on how these resources are limited and typically non-renewable, and how their distributions are changing as a result of depletion. Examples of uneven distributions of resources as a result of past processes include but are not limited to petroleum (locations of the burial of organic marine sediments and subsequent geologic traps), metal ores (locations of past volcanic and hydrothermal activity associated with subduction zones), and soil (locations of active weathering and/or deposition of rock).

The planet's systems interact over scales that range from microscopic to global in size, and they operate over fractions of a second to billions of years.

Examples of geoscience processes include surface weathering and deposition by the movements of water, ice, and wind.

All Earth processes are the result of energy flowing and matter cycling within and among the planet's system.

Emphasis is on the processes of melting, crystallization, weathering, deformation, and sedimentation, which act together to form minerals and rocks through the cycling of Earth's material.

Changes in biodiversity can influence ecosystem services that humans rely on. Examples of ecosystem services could include water purification, nutrient recycling, and prevention of soil erosion.

Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the soil in terrestrial environments. The atoms that make up the organisms in an ecosystem are cycled repeatedly between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem.