The past few days we’ve been studying fossils and often came across the term “sediment”.
Solid fragmented material, such as silt, sand, gravel, chemical precipitates, and fossil fragments, that is transported and deposited by water, ice, or wind or that accumulates through chemical precipitation or secretion by organisms, and that forms layers on the Earth’s surface.
I figured out a cool activity to demonstrate the sediment process. First I collected different “sediment layers” around the house, such as flour, rice, kool-aid powder, sugar, cous-cous, chia seeds, spices, kidney beans, etc… Have a jar ready, and if you want, some dino or animals to bury. I had Satori and David organize the granules from coarseness to fineness of the grains, which was a fun learning activity in itself, as we peered at the grains with a microscope and held separate pieces in our hands.
To-be-sediment-layers
Then we chose 2 dinosaur fossils and set them on the finest layer, the flour. This needn’t be done, as the dinos never showed up in our jar anyway.
Dino skeletons on the ground
Then pour over the sediment layers over the fossils (finest goes first so it stays on the bottom) and the result is a colorful display of sediment!
Sedimentary "rock" layers
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