Mrs. DuBose’s Class: AdVeNtUrEs iN ScIeNcE

THIS WEEK’S ADVENTURES

Last week students learned about the Earth’s layers. This week students were presented with the word Pangaea. Many students remembered that it was the “huge supercontinent” that existed millions of years ago. They did a great job recreating the cut-n-paste Pangaea in class using fossil evidence. The next question that was posed was why do you think Pangaea broke up. Students quickly realized that Pangaea must have drifted apart. This opened up our discussion of Wegener’s Continental Drift Theory. This led us to the discussion of convection currents. A pot of boiling rice was a wonderful example of convection. We also discussed the three types of heat transfer: radiation, conduction and convection through watching a bag of Jippy Pop. We did some cool little hand motions to go with radiation, conduction, and convection. ASK your child!

To review Continental Drift, click here

Interactive Animations

• Wegener’s Continental Drift
• The Breakup of Pangaea