Let's Eat Dirt (Not Really) - What's In the Soil?

Supplies:

A small paper cup for each student

Crushed Oreo wafers | brown sugar | Nerds candy | peanut butter

chocolate pudding | pretzel sticks | chopped chocolate chips |

M&M's | gummy worms | spoons

           

When gardeners prepare their soil for planting season, they try to make sure it has a little bit of all the "ingredients" that make a rich, fertile growing medium. So it's good to know what they are.

You should never, ever eat soil, and don't let your younger siblings eat it, either. But for this lesson in what soil is made of, let's eat the things that REPRESENT the things that come together and form dirt!

If you can think of more soil parts and edible items that represent them, add them to the mix!

Into each student's cup, put:

Crushed Oreo wafers, representing dark, rich compost.

Brown sugar can be sand.

Nerds candy = small bits of gravel.

Peanut butter = clay soil.

Chocolate pudding = silt.

Pretzel sticks (broken up) = small sticks.

Chopped chocolate chips = crushed leaves.

M&M's = microorganisms that help with decomposition into good soil.

Gummy worms = bet you can guess what they represent!