What kind of animals live on an ice planet like Hoth? How would the habitat on Tatooine allow different organisms to thrive? Connect social studies, science, and Star Wars in one engaging activity that focuses on the ecosystems...

Math and science come together in this cross-curricular astronomy lesson plan on planetary motion. Starting off with a hands-on activity that engages the class in exploring the geometry of circles and ellipses, this lesson...

A read-aloud anthology explores our solar system and beyond. Informational texts about astronomy invite pupils to discuss readings. Extension activities examine vocabulary, sayings, and phrases. Scholars work through the writing process...

Each member of a four-student group takes on a specific aspect of an assigned planet to research. After gathering information, the team works together to create a travel brochure and a presentation intended to convince other classmates...

How do you put something as large as the universe in perspective? Use a series of scale experiments. Classmates collaborate around four experiments to examine the scale of the earth-moon system, our solar system, the Milky Way galaxy,...

A website all about planetary mysteries—it's a one-stop-shop for all things, stars, planets, and space travel. Scholars read an astronomy overview to discover the page's big ideas, then choose from the plethora of resources, including...

Every year we discover new planets including more than 1,000 in 2016 alone. Will we ever find life on another planet? The instructional activity includes two activities to help scholars understand this concept. First, they analyze the...

Scientists don't have a ruler long enough to measure to the stars, so they rely on math. Scholars learn to calculate the distance from Earth to a star using the parallax method. They use angle measures from different perspectives to...

What is an alien's favorite game? All-star baseball! Scholars start defining living and non-living. Then, they conduct experiments to research if life exists, keeping in mind that life could be in many forms, not just human. 

Ever wonder why Pluto isn't considered a planet? Or how large the Earth is compared to the other inner planets? Explore the universe with a series of projects that simulate different aspects of our solar system. The activities require...

Have you ever wanted to travel the world? Take a virtual trip with a geography lesson plan that uses longitude and latitude, the position of the sun, an astronomy app, and a classroom globe.

A 9-page packet comes with 24 cards that have pictures and informational text about each object in the universe. From nebulae to dwarf planets, objects we see—or don't see—are represented in the cards through pictures and words.

Over four weeks, third graders participate in lessons that boost spelling, grammar, reading, and writing skills. Scholars explore spelling patterns, suffixes, singular and plural possessive nouns, quotations, and conjunctions....

There is a specific zone, or distance from a star, that a planet must be in order to have water in a liquid form. The activity demonstrates how flux density depends on its distance from the source. A photovoltaic cell gets power to...

Why do some stars in a constellation appear brighter than others? Using a get-up-and-move astronomy activity, scholars explore perspective and the appearance of constellations in the sky while developing an understanding of the...

There's a beautiful world all around us! Learn about the features of our planet with a series of activities designed for English learners. Kids sing, dance, and read about nature with fun lessons and interactive play.

There's more to that glowing ball of light in sky than most children realize. From the overall structure of the solar system, to the changing of the seasons, these hands-on lessons open the eyes of young scientists to...

Finish or launch your unit on the solar system with a jigsaw project covering major celestial concepts such as the Milky Way Galaxy, asteroids, meteors, comets, Earth's moon, and, of course, all the planets. Learners start by...

Trying to understand the vastness of outer space can be quite a challenge for young scientists. Help put things in perspective with this cross-curricular activity as students work in pairs creating scaled models of...

To gain an understanding of the significance of Galileo Galilei's revolutionary ideas, class members watch the short video "Stargazing Before Galileo," and conduct a close reading of Galileo's Sidereal Messsenger. They then...

Get kids interested in stargazing with a step-by-step guide. The guide begins with the do's and don'ts, what the defines a star, and introduces a journal. The page is linked to see stars if light pollution keeps stars away in your area.

Dramatize the stars and planets as they become a visual representation of the solar system in this activity. Young astronomers track and simulate various constellations as they orbit the Earth to learn the position and motion of...

In this first part of a two-part instructional activity, learners track and record the sun's azimuth using a solar panel. They graph and analyze the data to identify relationships among the time of day, the altitude and azimuth of the...

In this mind-bending activity, young engineers explore this question of whether or not light actually bends. Using holographic diffraction gratings, groups design and build a spectrograph. The groups then move on research a problem...