Beach Clean Up Science

We live a good bit of a distance from the ocean, so it's not really a doable day trip, and with Studly's work schedule, it's really hard for us to know when we will be getting the chance to feel the sand between our toes.  It's on our to do list for the summer though, so we are going to make every effort to go!  Unfortunately, it won't be this week, our oceans and beaches summer learning theme week.  So I had to really think when it came to deciding what activities we would be doing.

That's when I remembered that the Monterey Bay Aquarium has an excellent teachers resource site chock full of unit studies for all grade levels (I had used a few while teaching prek) so I decided to check out what kind of things they have that wouldn't require a classroom full of supplies or students to set up and complete.  I went through and picked a few from the 3-5 & 6-8 grade levels, and figured that the Beach Contamination science would be a great project to try since it was simple enough to set up, didn't require a ton of materials, and only needed a team of students.

Our foster cat, Poof, was our supervisor for this experiment.

I downloaded the unit and took about five minutes gathering the materials and setting up.  As an alternate to cotton balls (we didn't have any) we used cotton swabs, but everything else we had.  Then I just followed the set up instructions in the unit.  To introduce the activity, I just talked with the kids about garbage and waste.  We discussed what happens when it gets into the water supply and how there are special teams that are often sent out to clean up the waste.  

Then, after a quick description of their materials and how/why to use them, the children set to work, taking 'core samples' and trying to find where the contaminant was without damaging or disturbing the whole beach.

They actually found it rather quickly, after 'coring' just 3 times!

After finding the baking soda contaminant, the kids marked off the area with the string...

Then used bulldozer spoons to scoop out the remaining contaminant.

After removing the contaminant, Princess tested the baking soda with vinegar...

The kids then filtered the contaminant through the filtration device (coffee filter) into a cup before returning the sand to the beach.

I didn't print the student pages out myself, and didn't require the kids to keep within a 'budget'.  Instead, I just took the activity as a science experiment and let the kids experiment!  It's summer, and I am no big fan of math myself, so I am not going to require much of it outside of our daily 3 for 30 time.

Dirty D, who is going into third grade this fall, kept up very well with this experiment, and Princess, who is going into 7th, wasn't bored or unchallenged by it so I'd say it went over very well, also, it definitely got us interested in perhaps doing a bit of a beach clean up when we do make it to the shore!