Autumn 21 - Visit by Ian the Rock Man with KS2.

At Beach School, we had a visit by Ian The Rock Man. We looked at a range of things to learn about different types of rocks and we also did four different activities to help us with our learning and understanding. One of the activities is the Race to the Beginning of the World:  We started at a marked location on the beach in a series of exploration teams who set out starting at present and gradually went back in time taking their banner with them. The amount of time they travelled depended on how many steps they took, with each step being 10 million years. We passed through the age of dinosaurs, age of amphibians (the time that the sedimentary rocks on the beach were laid down), the age of single celled creatures, the time when the earth was very hot indeed (also known as the Hadean) and went back to the beginning of the world. We also took part in Shaken not stirred, which was a short activity with a jam jar that had both water and sediment in it. The children gave it a shake and then looked at what happened. The children noticed their were different layers to the jar and that was to explain that sediments need different environments to spread out. We sketched the Sill, looking at the different types of rocks there were and how they were joint. The children also spent some time building a sand-volcano and they created their defence mechanisms for people who would live near the volcano, which tied in with the recent La Palmas eruption. We then had a spokesperson that discussed why they built their volcanos the way they did and what they would use to defend their volcanos.