May 2025

Summer Sledding?

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Academic Standards

 

Reading Objective:

Students will recognize that the silver arrowreed plant tricks the dung beetle into dispersing its seeds, which mimic antelope dung.

 

Reading Level:

Lexile: 510L; GRL: L

 

Next Generation Science Standards:

2-LSS2-1: What plants need to grow

2-LSS2-2: The function of animals in dispersing a plant’s seeds

 

Vocabulary:

dung, disperse, mimicry

Use these questions to check students’ understanding and stimulate discussion:

1. What are hills made of sand called?
(sand dunes)

2. What is gypsum?
(a mineral)

3. How would you describe gypsum?
(Answers will vary.)

4. How does wind help create sand dunes?
(Answers will vary.)

Go online to print or project the Reading Checkpoint.

 

  • It has the largest area of gypsum sand dunes in the world.
  • It has footprints from the Ice Age that have turned into fossils.
  • Movies, including two Transformers films, have been made here.

Materials: Table salt, baking soda, sand, or another granular material, a box lid, a tray or pan with sides, straws for blowing through, bits of greenery (optional), pencils, copies of the skill sheet.

Overview:  Kids learn about how sand dunes are formed as they blow on grains of “sand” (table salt, baking soda, or sand) to form and move small “dunes.”

Directions:

  1. Before the lesson, decide how many pans of “sand” you’d like (one for the whole class or several), and equip accordingly. (Baking soda forms smoother dunes than salt, but it’s a little more powdery/messy.)
  2. To begin, remind students that dunes form when wind blows sand into piles. Can they blow gently on the “sand” to imitate the wind? Try straws if you have them.
  3. The goal is to explore, not form perfect dunes. That said, what type of “wind” works best?
  4. Once you have a dune, can the “wind” make it move?
  5. Put an object on the sand. (Pretend it’s a desert plant.) Do dunes form more easily around it?
  6. Record observations on the skill sheets.