Students listen to Under the Ground by Gallimard Jeunesse and Pascale de Bourgoing and conclude that soil provides food and protection for animals. Outdoors, students observe ways wild animals use soil. Students participate in a guided imagery through an underground burrow. They design a model of the soil animal they represent in their cooperative group. As an optional activity, the class creates a diorama of an underground area that students can crawl through.
Students observe a plant to determine that soil provides plants with a place to anchor their roots.
They feel the texture of different soils, plant bean seeds in a variety of soils, predict which soil their plants will grow best in, and record and graph their observations concerning their plants' growth. They identify ways plants depend on soil. Students observe and draw two ways a plant growing in one area looks different from the same type of plant growing in another area. Students bury a variety of garbage in the soil to test for decomposition. They conduct other demonstrations to observe decomposition and identify some scavengers and decomposers.