Dr Dirt’s K-12 Soil Science Outreach
and SO much more
Soil is the foundation of all terrestrial ecosystems and because it is always underfoot, it is often overlooked and nearly always underappreciated.
Soil Science is STEAM!
Dr. Dirt has a passion for telling others about Soil and has been developing simple activities to demonstrate the importance for more than 25 years.
Activities and educational information about soil, because Soil Is Awesome!
Have you ever made a soil you can eat? Try Dirt Pudding, Dr. Dirt Style!
Want to make your own Dirt Shirt?
Soil is an effective environmental filter and helps purify water as a three-way filter: physical, chemical and biological. As a physical filter, sand grains have rough edges which help capture wastes and large suspended in water are too big to pass through the small pores in soil.
Have you ever wondered why you cannot build a sand castle with dry sand?
Why can you build a sand castle with wet sand, but too much water causes it to collapse?
What is quicksand?
Did you know your state has a representative soil, one specially selected by soil scientist from the scores to hundreds (varies with size of the state and diversity of ClORPT) because of its unique characteristics or special significance to the region?
Go here to learn the story of your State Soil.
(All 50 states + Guam and Puerto Rico.)
The Soil Science Society of America has a K-12 Outreach Committee that has been developing materials for kids and teachers since about 2005 and has written a book for Middle School and one for advanced high school environmental science/introductory college soils courses. You can find these materials here:
Soil! Get the Inside Scoop Get kids excited about the living world of soil! Written for children aged 9-12, this 36-page, full-color book explores how soil is part of our life – the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the houses we live in, and more. The second edition will be published later this year (2025).
Know Soil, Know Life For high school and introductory college students, gain a foundation about the world of soils.
What about the story of that aggregate? It is an aggregate from a poorly drained soil: the gray areas represent an anaerobic (reducing) environment, the black is topsoil transported down by a crawdad, and the orange surrounding it is from the aerobic (oxidizing) environment created as oxygen followed the crawdad burrow.
Updated: 7 February 2025