Learning About Landforms

I pass my old students daily in the hallways and it never fails to amaze me how BIG they get! They often pop in to say hi and my current class loves it when “big kids” visit! Mostly so they can pepper them with questions! Most often they ask “What was your favorite thing you did in second grade?” Learning about landforms is high on the list! Our Continents, Oceans and Landforms project is always a huge highlight and a whole lotta fun!

We start by reviewing continents and oceans (first grade spends a lot of time on this) then identifying and defining different types of landforms.

We worked with vocabulary, classifying landforms as water or land features, labeling continents and oceans on maps, and defining different types of landforms in our literacy centers.

Building Islands with Landforms

One of the highlights of this project is that students can get creative by an imaginary landform filled island. I’ve used both salt dough and Crayola Air Dry Clay to do this project. Both work great and I can often have a parent volunteer either donate the clay or make the salt dough.

Landforms creative writing project~Building the landforms on imaginary islands.

While building their islands students need to include at least three landforms but they often include many more!

The special features of their islands can be completely made up, but they need to be located in a real ocean near a real continent.

I like to do the painting on a Friday so that the islands can dry over the weekend. On Monday students painted our islands making sure to use the blue, green, and brown paint to differentiate between their land and water features.

Incorporating Map Skills

As part of our project we make maps of our islands. We just finished our unit on map skills and I love this PowerPoint from Teacher’s Clubhouse! I use it every year and keep it up as a reference while my class makes their maps, map keys, compass roses.

Landforms creative writing project~Using map skills.

Students named their islands and drew maps that featured all of their lland features, a map key, and compass rose.

Landforms creative writing project~Making maps of our islands.

Landforms in Literacy Centers

I like to integrate science and social studies into our literacy center time. This gives my students many opportunities to use the content vocabulary as well as to read and write about landforms.

I display lots of charts and maps to give students a reference as we work through our unit. You can see more of our landforms literacy centers as well as a list of informational books I use, in this post.

Writing About Landforms

To manage this project, I not only carry our learning about landforms into our literacy centers, but also into our writing block.

To incorporate a few different types of writing, students write imaginary personal narratives about life on their islands as well as writing a post card home to their parents from their imaginary island. Before writing, we brainstorm a list of adjectives to help set the tone, make their writing stronger, and give their reader a more vivid mental picture.

Landforms creative writing project~Adjectives anchor chart

We use this bubble map during prewriting to plan out the required elements and to solidify our ideas. Next, students orally rehearse their ideas with a partner.

Landforms creative writing project~Planning a narrative about an imaginary island.

Postcard writing is something new to some of my students. it gives them practice in writing their address as they design and write a postcard home to Mom and Dad from our imaginary island.

After all of these elements were finished we glued the prewriting and final drafts into a construction paper folder. We glued the postcards on the front and maps on the back.

Landforms creative writing project~planning our island narratives

I’m a little strategic in my timing of this unit to coincide its completion around the time we have parent/teacher conferences.

Landforms creative writing project~functional writing piece~ A letter home from our imaginary islands

My class begs to take their islands home as soon as they are finished. However, I don’t dare send them on the bus with a teetering paper plate! I save them for our parent conference instead. This way, I have an example of their writing to discuss during our conference and Mom and Dad can carry the island home.

Landforms hands-on creative writing project

Click here to see more of the landforms unit I use. This complete unit includes detailed, 2-week lesson plans, writing project, landforms charts, assessments, printables, literacy centers, and bulletin board display.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to pin it for later!

Happy teaching friends!

Comments

Cindy Calenti says
September 22 at 12:40 pm

I just love seeing your class activities. They are always so creative and hands-on… lucky students!

Cindy
Granny Goes to School

Learning in Wonderland says
September 22 at 11:22 pm

Wow!!! You are making me miss second grade 🙁 Everything you do is just spectacular! I love how islands 🙂

vicky1970 says
October 16 at 3:02 am

Linda – your kids are so engaged and having such fun! Love it my friend!
xoxo,
Vicky
Teaching and Much Moore

Kelli Stowe says
November 2 at 12:16 am

This comment has been removed by the author.

Unknown says
November 3 at 2:12 pm

How large was your class and how much of the air dry clay did you use? ie. how far would a 2.5 lb container go?

Jaena says
May 17 at 5:19 am

How much salt dough did you have to make?

- Linda says
  May 17 at 5:36 am
  
  Hi Jaena,
  I made 3 batches of salt dough or enough to give each of my 24 students a ball of dough the size of a lemon. I have them divide that into 2 parts and use one for the island base, the other for all of the landforms. I hope this helps and your students enjoy the project!
  Linda
  
Da Art Lady says
September 4 at 8:55 am

Hi there,

I teach grade 2 and I love your landforms project! What is your recipe for your salt dough? I’m going to give my parent volunteers a chance to help out!

Thanks!

- Linda says
  September 8 at 7:14 am
  
  Hi there!
  \I use a basic salt dough recipe that you can Google. I’ve included a recipe in the Landforms unit as well. The past couple of years I’ve also used Crayola Air Dry Clay. It works even better but is a little pricey, about $9.00 each. I had two parents each donate a tub that was enough for a class of 26. I hope this helps and your class enjoys building and learning about landforms!
  
Andrea says
April 15 at 3:20 pm

How long does it take the salt dough to dry and harden before painting?

- Linda says
  April 15 at 5:11 pm
  
  Hi Andrea!
  Depending on how thick the kids make their landforms it takes a couple of days for the salt dough to dry. I try to do it on a Thursday or Friday so they can dry over the weekend and then we paint on Monday.
  
  Thanks so much for stopping by and for asking!
  Linda

Learning About Landforms