Curated OER
Plants Scavenger Hunt Activity
The hunt is on! Provide young botanists with a list of eighteen plant-related questions and let them loose as they search for answers on corresponding fact cards. Perform this activity in the classroom or use it as an opportunity to take...
Rainforest Alliance
Protecting the Critical Habitat of the Manatee and Loggerhead Turtle
Explore ocean habitats with a lesson that showcases the home of manatees and loggerhead turtles in Belize. Here, pupils compare and contrast the homes of ocean animals to those of humans, listen to an original short story about...
NOAA
The Climate Team: Make a Solar Heat Engine
Learners investigate how solar energy is converted into heat in part two of the 10-part Discover Your Changing World series. They build and test homemade solar cookers to boil water and cook rice. Pupils consider the impact of heat...
NOAA
The Incredible Carbon Journey: Play the Carbon Journey Game
Class members explore the carbon cycle in the final installment of the 10-part Discover Your Changing World series. They play a simulation game where they walk through the steps carbon takes as it cycles through the different layers...
National Park Service
The Water Cycle Game
Take young scientists on a trip through the water cycle with this interactive science activity. After setting up a series of ten stations representing the different places water can be found, children use the included printable dice...
Curated OER
Bee Pollen Popular
The world would be a much different place without the help of pollinators. Read about the important role bats, hummingbirds, and various insects play in plant reproduction, exploring the interdependence of living things in an ecosystem....
Wild BC
Carbon - The Short and the Long
For this complex game about the carbon cycle, the playing field is divided into air, living, and earth zones. Children are assigned to be either plants or animals, and collect carbon tokens as they proceed from zone to zone. While the...
Illustrative Mathematics
Growing Bean Plants
Plant growth experiments offer rich, cross-curricular learning opportunities that can really excite and engage young learners. In this series, children work in pairs planting, measuring, and comparing the height of bean plants in order...
NOAA
Climate Is Our Friend…Isn’t It?: Make an Extinction Polyhedron
Climate affects populations in different ways. Scholars research extinct organisms and mass extinctions in part three of the 10-installment Discover Your Changing World series. They create graphic organizers, then fill in the...
K-State Research and Extensions
Water
How are maps like fish? They both have scales. The chapter includes six different activities at three different levels. Scholars complete activities using natural resources, learn how to read a map, see how to make a compass rosette,...
PBS
Reading Adventure Pack: Bees
A Reading Adventure pack explores the busy life of bees. After reading a fiction and nonfiction text, scholars complete three hands-on activities. Participants invent a robot that can do the work of bees, cheers to hardworking bees with...
PBS
Reading Adventure Pack: The Snowy Day
Scholars listen to a read-aloud of fiction and nonfiction books, The Snowy Day, written and illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats, and Snow Is Falling, written by Franklyn Branley and illustrated by Holly Keller, then take part in four creative...
PBS
Reading Adventure Pack: Gardening
A Reading Adventure Pack invites scholars to start gardening. Following a reading of two books—fiction and nonfiction—young green thumbs repurpose food containers to grow an herb garden in their kitchen, plant seeds in starter pots out...
Teach Engineering
Design Inspired by Nature
Let nature guide your engineering designs. By taking apart a flower, pupils learn about reverse engineering. They use the results to brainstorm designs for new products or ideas. This is the seventh installment of a nine-part Life...
Foundation for Water & Energy Education
How Can Work Be Done with Water Power? Activity B
In this second of three activities, energy engineers plan and create a hydropower dam as they learn how hydroelectric power plants generate electricity. A hydropower puzzle is also included, which can be worked on by teams that finish...
Ask a Biologist
It’s a Plankton Eat Plankton World
For as small as they are, plankton sure play an enormous role in maintaining marine ecosystems. Dive into an investigation of these tiny organisms with a hands-on life science activity in which children cut out pictures of sea...
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Viral Lysis and Budding
How do some viruses spread so quickly, and why do they make us feel terrible? Answer these (and many more) questions through a simple yet impactful lessons. Pupils observe demonstrations that show the two methods viruses use to escape...
NOAA
It All Runs Downhill
Examine how pollution makes its way into an ocean with help from a model watershed. Scholars use household items to recreate a mini-watershed, equipped with pollutants, that when mixed with rain drain into a model's body of...
Teach Engineering
Live Like an Animal
When your parents say that your room's a pig sty, tell them about biomimicry. The sixth installment of a nine-part Life Science unit has scholars research the shelters used by animals in the natural world, like turtle shells. Using the...
Curated OER
Using Vegetation, Precipitation, and Surface Temperature to Study Climate Zones
Using NASA's Live Access Server, earth scientists compare the temperature, precipitation, and normalized difference vegetation index for four different locations. They use the data to identify the climate zone of each location using...
Agriculture in the Classroom
Pumpkins... Not Just For Halloween
Celebrate fall with four pumpkin themed hands-on activities! After learning about pumpkins, scholars complete two activity sheets that reinforce estimation and word problems. They then plant pumpkin seeds and bake a pie in...
Curated OER
Sock Walk (Seed Dispersal)
Students collect seeds from field plants as part of understanding seed dispersal.
Wild BC
Maple Trees and Marmots
Kinesthetic activities simulate animal activity as the seasons progress in a lesson that introduces climate change to primary pupils. The kids role-play maple trees collecting what they need to survive, but as each year comes...
University of Illinois
University of Illinois Extension: The Great Plant Escape Parts of a Seed
Help Detective Le Plant discover how a seed grows into a plant. Students will learn to describe a seed's structure and what's needed for seed growth.