Download Instructions (MSWord)

Suitable for: Upper Key Stage 2 and older

Learning objectives

• to demonstrates the fragility of our relationship with the soil;
• to demonstrate how humans depend on the soil to grow the food on which we all depend and how this is a sparse and vulnerable resource.

ESD&GC concepts
Interdependence, Sustainable Change, Need and Rights, Citizenship and Stewardship

You will need:
One eating apple and a knife.

Procedure
The lecturer/ teacher works with the whole group.

Take one apple and cut it into four.
Place three quarters on one side and one quarter on the other.
Ask the students what they think they represent.
Answer: the seas and the land.
Take the remaining quarter and cut it in half –
one piece, an eighth, represents the land not lived on by people, the other eighth is where people live.

Slice the one-eighth piece representing the land into four.
Set 3 aside.
These 3 pieces represent the land which is too rocky, too wet, cold, steep or with soil too poor for agriculture.
The remaining one thirty-second is the land which we can farm.

Now peel off the skin of the apple.
This piece of skin represents the Earth's crust on which we all depend, and it is less than five feet deep.

The following information will help students understand the importance of caring for our soil
One third of all arable land was lost between 1980 and 2000.
Each year 6 million hectares of land are degraded to desert-like conditions. Over 3 decades this would amount to an area as large as Saudi Arabia. (WCED 1987)