And Now It's Time For A Little Science!

What does mass wasting, gravity, water, and a sandbox all have in common? Science, of course! Specifically, Jonathan's science lesson of the day. It seems that the lab today required him to form various grades using a cookie sheet and soil in order to determine how rain, gravity and soil all worked together to cause erosion, and then of course deposition. Rills, creeks, rivers, tributaries, sediment and deltas seemed to be the words of the day and I was thoroughly enjoying the boys foray in to science. Until...

So let me get this straight. You want to take my cookie sheet - the one that Honey and Poppy got for a wedding gift, the one that is so well made they just don't make them like that any more - and you want to plop some soil on it to imitate rills, creeks, rivers and tributaries???? Uhhhh... okay! Sure. Just do it outside!!!

Thankfully, we're experiencing just a touch of spring and the boys could head out and enjoy some homemade erosion before the rain hit and did it for real. Off they went. To the sandbox with my cookie sheet and the pitcher of water, ready to do battle as the elements. They managed to have a wonderful time making rivers that flowed downstream at various rates and even managed to track a larger piece of sand or two in the process. They formed their own paths as needed to imitate rivers flowing in to tributaries, and then realized just how a delta might form because they made one themselves. Thankfully, Don had the outside water spouts turned off or they might have well been on their way to a scale model ocean, too. In our once dry sandbox.

Isn't science fun???

Here's Matthew explaining their experiments:


Preparing for the final experiment:


The final erosion in progress:


And Jonathan's feeling of success!!! Let's see, he got outside mid morning to play in the sandbox with my cookie sheet and pitcher along with everything they already have out there. Yeah! It was definitely a success on sooo many levels!!!