Parent Visitation Day at Westerly Elementary

We had Parent Visitation Day at school this week at Westerly Elementary. Miss McMaugh, Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Harmount planned a real messy project for us to do with our parents and it was extremely fun!

We have been learning about glaciers and how glaciers are responsible for making Ohio flat. With the help of our parents, we made glaciers. Don’t worry, the glaciers weren’t as big as they were in real life. So you’re probably wondering what we used to make glaciers. We made them out of a scoop of vanilla ice cream! We also used mini chocolate chips for rocks, chocolate chunks for boulders, pretzel sticks for trees, chocolate powder for soil and green sugar for minerals.

The first step was to make a path for our glacier. We folded aluminum foil to make a chute. Next we each designed our own landscapes of dirt, minerals, rocks, boulders and trees. Then we drew a picture of our landscape and wrote a prediction about what our glacier would do to the landscape when it melted. Finally, the teachers gave us our ice cream scoop glacier while we held the chute along our arm.  The heat from our arm helped make the glacier begin to melt and slide down the landscape.

My glacier took forever to melt and move! When my glacier did, it pushed the rocks, boulders and branches forward. As for the minerals and soil, it melted them together.  From that I concluded that the minerals and soil mixed together is the reason why Ohio has such rich soil for growing crops.

Our glacier experiment was not over yet. We had to draw a picture of what the landscape looked like after the glacier melted and write our observations. I was most surprised by how slowly my glacier took to melt and slide! Now I know that it must have taken a long time for the glaciers to melt. Finally, we got to eat the landscape and glacier and that was the very best part!