Soil Investigations

This afternoon, in Year 3, we were busy being soil detectives. We had three different soil samples that we had to look at and see what the soil was made up of. We found things like: twigs, leaves, conker shells, stones, worms, centipedes, slugs, roots, plants, seeds and bark. We spoke about how soil is formed from rocks and is made up of nearly 50% minerals and the rest is made up of air and water. We learnt about how things are added and lost (like water) and how worms help transport the soil and things like decaying leaves transform the soil. We then had an investigation where we looked at how quickly water can move through soil. The children were great observers and noticed how some of the water came out clear whilst other water came out dirty. Some of the soil samples let the water pass through instantly, whereas one of the samples still had water sitting on top of the soil after 5 minutes. We then spent time discussing the reasons behind this and Year 3 have some fantastic budding scientists thinking about the types of rocks that the soil has been made from and how that would affect the permeability and also thinking about how old the soil was and the amount of air that the soil was made up of. Well done Year 3!