This cool lesson plan is ideal for elementary engineers or physical scientists, especially when learning about heat transfer and insulation. After reading a page of background information, engineering teams collaborate to design and...

Polar ice samples provide scientists with valuable information about the condition of the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years in the past. Of particular interest is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and its...

Soil scientists gain experience with an infiltrometer can to determine the infiltration rates at different locations on campus. If you are using the entire unit, the class has already analyzed water flow and soil types, so they should...

Not really just a lesson plan, but a series of activities, reading handouts, and teacher's guidelines for conducting a class mini unit on the battery. Physical scientists focus on the history of the cell battery, experiment with...

How did the stickleback fish, which was once ocean bound, evolve to be able to persist in freshwater lakes? Hear from the scientists who identified the genes and related switches that allowed these survivors to adapt. In addition to the...

Can the force of falling water through a tube vary by altering the diameter of the tube or its height? That is what physical scientists aim to discover in this activity, the third in successively more revealing activities on the power of...

Curious physical scientists follow a lesson on the properties of water with this lesson on distillation. They observe a miniature water cycle model that filters dirty water into clean water. These two lessons combined are an enriching...

Middle school scientists construct a working water wheel from an aluminum pie pan. Because of the sharp edges on the cut aluminum, this activity is for mature learners only. You could have your class compete to see whose wheel can lift...

Step into the great outdoors and develop young scientists' skills of observation with a nature journaling lesson. Given a specific focus or goal, children practice making and recording observations of nature through written descriptions...

Children gain first-hand experience with Native American agriculture while investigating the life cycle of plants with this engaging experiment. Focusing on what the natives called the Three Sisters - corn, beans, and squash - young...

You don't have to travel far to learn about rocks, just step outside, pick up a stone, and begin investigating. After taking a class walk around the school grounds collecting rocks, young scientists practice their skills of observation...

High school physical scientists collide with motion. They work in pairs to design a paper car that will protect a raw egg during a head-on collision. Measurements of distance traveled, time of run, vehicle specs, and photo gate flags are...

Using flexible mirror-like paper, physical scientists experiment with images produced by curving it and looking into its reflective surface. They find that concave mirrors cause reflected light waves to cross and actually flip the image...

Note that this lesson is best paired with the preceding lesson in the unit. In that lesson, elementary physical scientists observed that the color coating of M&Ms® candies do not mix when dissolved off of the chocolate surface. Now...

If you set up a triad of mirrors into a corner figuration, they act as a kaleidoscope, bouncing light waves back and forth indefinitely, changing the light that your eyes perceive. Although the materials required are very specific and...

Make a splash with young scientists as you teach them all about water using this activity packet. Thirstin, a cartoon glass of water, walks children through the water treatment process, teaches them about different sources of water, and...

Young scientists create their very own aquifers in this science lesson on ground water. After learning about how some people get their drinking water from underground wells, young learners use sand, modeling clay, and aquarium rocks to...

Determining whether or not something is living can be more difficult than it seems. Put your young scientists to work defining their own criteria to identify life, then work with three samples to see if they are alive or...

Dive into a lesson on the hydrosphere with this Powerpoint presentation. Building on prior knowledge of the water cycle, young scientists learn what happens to water after it falls as precipitation and explore the...

Young scientists track Hurricane Katrina across the Atlantic Ocean as they learn about these destructive forces of nature. Provided with a table of data tracking the location and conditions of Katrina over a one week span, students...

Young scientists explore the animal kingdom from the safety of the classroom with this short research project. After first choosing an animal, children use the Internet to discover where it lives, what it eats, and how it...

Your young population scientists analyze a table of values, write a model to represent the real life data, finish the table of data and predict future populations in a collaborative, real-life activity.

From their sweat to the water vapor in their breath, astronauts recycle every possible drop of water while in space. After watching a short video describing the different ways materials are recycled and reused in space...

Raise children's awareness about conservation with this series of vocabulary activities. Offering riddles about endangered species and a crossword puzzle involving key terms relating to conservation, these fun worksheets will...