A couple of months ago the producers of the popular Crash Course channel on YouTube started a Crash Course for Kids channel. Crash Course for Kids offers overviews of various topics (mostly science) through the use of greenscreen visuals and a lot of talking. Weathering and Erosion is the topic of one of the more recent releases on Crash Course for Kids. In the video students will see a comparison of Cape Cod’s coastline in 1984 and 2014. That image combined with the commentary does a great job of showing students the effects of erosion.

Applications for Education

Like a lot of people this spring I’ve been spending time working on landscaping my yard. One of my projects has been to build terraces to slow erosion on my lot. After watching Weathering and Erosion: Crash Course Kids ask your students to find and take pictures of examples of erosion and erosion prevention measures in their neighborhoods.

You could also continue the lesson with Shape It Up. Shape It Up is one of many good educational games and activities on Kinetic City. Shape It Up is an activity that would be good for use in an elementary school Earth Science lesson. The activity presents students with “before” and “after” images of a piece of Earth. Students then have to select the force nature and the span of time it took to create the “after” picture. If students choose incorrectly, Shape It Up will tell the student and they can choose again.