MINING WITH PEANUTS
MATERIALS- Peanuts with the shells painted (number of colors depends on the number of teams) - several per team
- Maps of the classroom (makes a great math project - measuring and drawing grids of the room)
- Bowls for each team for the "processing" step
METHOD
You can divide the students into teams (or companies). Designate the following jobs in each team ( you may have several students in each category):
- Explorers
- Mappers
- Miners
- Processors
Painted peanuts are hidden around the room like Easter eggs. Groups of children (explorers) set off in a search. Each group seeks out a particular color peanut. They peer behind books, stand on tiptoe to check out a windowsill and get down on their knees to explore under tables. They don't pick up the peanuts.
Their job is to determine where the various colored peanuts are located. They then work with the "mappers" to mark those locations on the map of the classroom. After the peanut locations are mapped, the "miners" go back to the charted locations and gather the peanuts they have found.
The children have just learned about surveying, mapping and mining. The success of their mining venture; however, has yet to be defined.
The "processors" then separate the nut from the shell. This is a good time to discuss recycling and other options for use of the by-products of mining.
Peanut butter products could represent phosphate's finished fertilizer product.
Other Activities:
- Discuss dealing with environmental regulations that may demand they push a brook and clean up waste products that fell to the floor.
- Students get to calculate profits and losses.
- Permitting or reclamation could also be addressed.
DISCUSSION
In the end, the children will have used communication, mathematical, reasoning, and critical thinking skills. They will have had science, social study, and environmental lessons as well as a phosphate primer.
They learn that the nut represents phosphate. The painted side of the shell represents the sand and the unpainted side represents the clay that is mined with the phosphate and must be separated from the ore. The paper film surrounding the nut represents phosphate mining and processing by-products such as phosphogypsum. The peanut butter is the end product -- fertilizer. Additives are used to change the peanut butter flavor, illustrating the way chemical components change the type of fertilizer that is produced.
