Presenting interesting projects to children will help them understand important concepts about landforms.
Landforms are features on the surface of the earth such as mountains, hills, prairies and plateaus. Children begin learning about landforms in early elementary school. Using projects and activities to introduce landforms may help children understand the material on a deeper level. Many landform projects can be done as a large group class project, while others can be completed individually.
Modeling Clay
This activity is appropriate for third through fifth graders. Split your class into four small groups. Assign each group one landform to research. Provide each group with some modeling clay to sculpt their landform. Have the group prepare an oral presentation and fact sheet about their landform and show the landform sculpture they created to the class. Provide a large table for displaying the finished clay landforms as well as the fact sheets.
Landform Flip Booklets
This is an individual activity suitable for children in first through third grades. Have students create and label landform flip booklets from colored construction paper. Each page will represent a different landform, and you will be able to see each layer when you open the cover of the book. Use brown construction paper for mountains, which will be the last page in your booklet. Do not cut mountains from the paper, as the last page in the book needs to be full size. Instead, have children draw mountains on the brown paper, perhaps adding snow to the peaks if they would like to. The next page will be green paper hills. Cut the green paper into rolling hills, making sure the hills are shorter than the mountains. The next page will be blue to represent all kinds of water. Cut the blue paper slightly shorter than the hills and students can draw waves for the ocean, a circle for a lake, and straight lines for rivers. This project is good for younger students who are just beginning to learn about landforms, as it only introduces a few. Have students label the pages with the name of the landform as well as list one fact about each landform in the booklet.
Walk Like A Landform
This activity is appropriate for younger students and can be done in a large group. After studying landforms, ask the students to move like the various landforms. For example, walking like a mountain would involve taking very long, high-kneed steps. Hills would involve a lot of slow up and down movement. Ask students to walk like a plateau, a prairie, etc.
Landform Cookies
When finishing your lesson on landforms, make individual landform cookies. Provide each student with a sugar cookie that closely resembles a map of the United States. Use blue and green icing, peanut butter, candy corn, chocolate chips and other edible treats to create landforms on the map in the proper places. Allow children to use their imaginations when creating landforms to make candy corn mountains, peanut butter plateaus, and chocolate chip valleys.
Tags: about landforms, page will, activity appropriate, candy corn, construction paper
