This activity helps students understand that the earth contains more water than land. Take a piece of paper and divide it into two columns, labeling one side "water" and the other side "land." Choose a volunteer and toss an inflatable globe to him. Ask him to identify if his fingers touched land or water when he caught the globe. Continue tossing the globe to other students in the class. Keep track of the number of times their fingers touch land or touch water on the piece of paper. At the end of the activity, they will realize that their fingers touched water more often than land.
Give students national or state maps, and ask them to decorate the landforms with candy. Instruct them to use chocolate chips for mountains, blue icing for water, jelly beans for hills and sprinkles for sand. Advise them to use icing to hold the landforms together.
In this activity, students can get messy while creating their own landforms. Squirt some white shaving cream on their desks, and instruct them to use their hands to create a landform, such as a mountain or a hill. When they're finished, squirt some blue shaving cream on their desks, so they can turn it into water around the landforms they created.
Instruct students to create a 3-D book that demonstrates their knowledge of landforms. Give them brown construction paper to cut out mountains for the back of the book. Next, they can cut out hills from green paper. Have them cut out blue paper for the next layer to represent rivers or lakes. Instruct students to staple the pages together on the left sides of the page to create a book.