What's the best way to learn how watersheds work? Build one! Combining engineering, the water cycle, and ecology concerns, the activity is the perfect fit for an interdisciplinary unit. Teams construct a model watershed with simple...

Art is a wonderful way to express feelings of social unrest or change. Learners will examine the works of two contemporary Japanese artists, and how they each have used art to say something big. They analyze the work of Katsuhiro Saiki...

Flotsam by David Wiesner and The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole, illustrated by Bruce Degen, begin a reading adventure pack focusing on oceans. With story listening and thoughtful discussion, scholars complete several...

Young geologists piece together the puzzle of plate tectonics in an earth science lesson. Given a physical map of the world, they search for land formations that indicate the location of different types of plate boundaries.

Three days of erosion exploration await your elementary geologists. Learners begin by examining rivers via Google Earth, then they model water flow in sand, and finally, they identify resulting landforms. This lesson is written...

In this lesson, students read and analyze articles about the alkaline water in Lake Turkana in Kenya, and about a wind energy project near Lake Turkana. They then examine the many factors that must be considered when undertaking this...

Learn about the career of a geographer, a social scientist that uses knowledge of climate, culture, and topography to address a whole host of problems the world faces. Find out the educational requirements and what the job entails in...

This site provides a detailed explanation of the structure of bird feathers. Topics include feather topography, types of feathers, and feathers and flight.

A lab activity where students study the" relationships between landscape appearance, topography and underlying geology". In this particular activity students explore the landscape region of New York State to see the effects of...

[Free Registration/Login Required] A site where students can label the features of the ocean floor such as: mid-ocean ridge, rift, and more. Also on the site is a short quiz about the different topography of the ocean floor.

Students construct a three-dimensional model of a water catchment basin using everyday objects to create hills, mountains, valleys and water sources. They experiment to see where rain travels and collects, and survey water pathways to...

This site from the National Aeornautics and Space Administration provides a fun activity for the subject. "Clouds often hide large areas of the Earth's surface. We can use radar to make detailed maps of Earth right through clouds or...

Find out what topographic maps are and how to make them. The instructions are complete with pictures to help you construct a mountain of clay and and a corresponding topographic map.

For a picture of a topographical map, go to this page. There is some information to help you understand what they are.