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Ask the students to help you summarize how soil is like sand and how soil is different from sand. Older students might be given this as a writing prompt. Using information recorded on a graphic organizer or Venn diagram as a tools in forming a paragraph is an excellent skill-building activity.
You might want to return to the initial photos and the point made about plants growing more abundantly in soil than in sand. Although Activity 5 will return to this contrast, you might want to initiate a plant growth investigation in the two media. Initially, seeds such as bean seeds will germinate perfectly well in either moist medium. It will take at least two weeks of growth before features of the maturing plants will show soil to be the more favorable medium, all other factors being equal.
You might take one more look at the Venn diagram and say, “So…it seems that some of the particles in soil are like those we found in sand. But I see that soil has many other things as well. What other things does it have in it?” This question prompts students to see that soil is actually a mixture of several media. Tell students that in the next activity, they will devise and use ways to separate this mixture in order to describe its composition.
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