Before we begin, go to this page and print out the map for each child..

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/

Imagine if you were in a swimming pool on a blow up raft. And around you are your friends, also each on a raft. You all decide to group together and hold on to each other’s raft. Then someone jumps in the pool. What happens to the rafts? They bump back and forth, slide up and back and some slip under another one on the edge while another may ride up on top of another one on the edge. This is what is happening with Earth’s crust. We ride on a core of melted lava. The plates have very little room to move around. As the magma heats and cools, swirling around under us, it causes our plates to bump and slide. We feel them as earthquakes or see them as volcanoes.

On this map:

http://mineralsciences.si.edu/tdpmap/

You can see the plate lines of the planet. Draw these lines on your map, in pencil.

Then go to this map of the known volcanic eruptions on earth…

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/PlateTectonics/Maps/map_plate_tectonics_world.html

Everywhere there are red dots, also draw in red on your map.

Now find the last 4 earthquakes that have happened:

7.0 magnitude quake near Japan last Friday, Feb 26, the 8.8 near Chile on Saturday the 27th, and a 6.4 near Taiwan earlier today as I write this (March 4th) and, of course, the 7.0 quake in January in Haiti, 2010.

Now plot them in dark green on your map. Are they near any plate boundaries? Keep this map handy as we learn of more activity and add it in green to your map.

Read this about the New Madras fault….

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070502_newmadrid_quake.html