Shortbread and sand-wiches for the river mouths – erosion, not hunger, in Prep V

As part of our Geography topic on rivers, Prep Five were investigating erosion yesterday. Having packed damp sand into a tray (the chefs among us thought it was rather like making shortbread!), we tilted the tray and created our own mini rivers by squeezing drops of water from a pipette at the top of the tray into the sand. Just as gravity causes the water in real rivers to flow down from their source in the mountains to the sea, so our mini rivers began to flow downwards. Gradually, the river channels grew wider, and we saw how the force of the water slowly eroded our river banks. Some of our models formed deltas, and we could see how the water was transporting its load, which it finally deposited at the river mouths.

Having washed our hands and cleared the sand from our desks we sketched our models, labelling our diagrams with some of the geographical vocabulary we have been learning this term. Many thanks to Mr. Grant, our Geography coordinator for facilitating our investigation, and for his expertise and enthusiasm.