“Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” ” Genesis 1:6

For our day 2 study we learned about the different layers of the earths atmosphere and what happens in each one.

The wall chart above is called “the big book of earth” it has some great illustrations for earths atmosphere as well as a simple explanation of what it is.

I also leaned heavily on this site. It explains things that go on in each layer.

For the Exosphere we read about it being on the very edge of earths atmosphere and that sometimes satellites orbit there.

Thermosphere- aurora borealis, we watched a couple of great videos showing it. Look for a time lapse video of it. The international space station orbits within the thermosphere so we looked into that also. NASA kids site has some information about who is in the space station right now!

Mesosphere- meteor showers

Stratosphere-lighting sprites, ozone layer, weather balloons

Troposphere-clouds

We also did many air experiments that we found in a book called “the Usborne book of science activities Volume two”. It has been such a great resource I decided to buy the other volumes!

I am sure you could find many air experiments online also.

The boys loved this experiment with matches. We did it over and over! The more matches the better! You can find out why the water fills the jar, here.

I recommend putting a couple drops of food coloring in the water. Don’t mix it. You can watch the water current as it moves into the jar.

I had the the boys draw a picture to sum up what we learned about each layer, then I would hang it up on our door.

I had grand plans of making each one a different shade of blue and really pretty. Then I realized I would have to go out and by paper in order to do that. I stuck with the cheap option and used what we had.

All of my oldest’s pictures include Lex Luther trying to destroy something in the picture…

In one he is trying to destroy the ozone layer!

Boys are awesome.

I am doing this post on the road so it is difficult to include links to all the sites I used. If you want to see more of my resources you can check out my creation study folder at Pinterest.

*view more air experiments we did in this post.

 

Day 1 Light, Day & Night

Day 3 Dry land & Plants