Playdough Activities for Earth Day: Layers of the Earth

Does your preschooler know about Earth Day or when it is? Today’s #Playful Preschool theme is ‘Earth’ and the other bloggers are coming with their best just for you. I chose to focus on the layers of the earth  by doing a playdough science activity with my daughter. J (my daughter) loves when we use playdough for our science experiments and so I am following her lead.  Let’s walk.

Allow me to age myself here, but I remember in Grade 7 (year 1997) we had a geography assignment about the layers of the earth and someone suggested a playdough recipe because I had no playdough at home. Sadly my playdough did not come out correctly and I did not get the grade I wanted. This is me living through my preschooler and earning that grade.

WHAT YOU NEED

• playdough (4 different colours)
• playdough knife or an eating knife
• eager preschooler

DIRECTIONS

1) Roll your first playdough in a small ball. This layer will be the inner core of the earth. We chose yellow.

2) Grab your second playdough and flatten it so that it can cover the ‘inner core’ (your first ball). This will be the outer core.

3) Next get your third playdough and do just as you did in step 2 and cover both layers. This will be the mantle.

4) Your last layer is the crust. To make this layer you flatten your  fourth playdough and cover the other three layers.

5) Once this is done, use your knife and cut the ball in 2.

Here is how ours turned out: