Students research origin of solar system, discuss theories they have found, and create paper mache solar system models.

Students become familiar with characteristics of folktales by reading or listening to African folktale that explains why sun and moon live in the sky. Students then create their own folktales about the sun and moon or another aspect of...

Does your class know their planets? Implement an activity that has them describing the solar system, identifying properties of the planets, and placing them in order from their distance from the sun.

Students identify different features of the solar system. They analyze the sun, moon, planets, comets, and asteroids. They use the Internet and other resource sources to find information about the solar system.

Second graders complete a unit of lessons on the solar system. They complete various art projects inspired by Van Gogh's 'Starry Night,' create a moon phases book, create a moon phase wind chime, develop a timeline of space exploration,...

Students research solar energy. In this solar energy lesson, students construct a KWL chart and research solar energy through various websites and related readings. Students complete a science journal page as an assessment.

The sun isn't just a ball of yellow! Young scientists learn about the features of the sun using a hands-on modeling activity. They build models of the sun using common household items to represent sunspots, solar prominence, and the...

The moon orbits Earth while the Earth is rotating, and the Earth revolves around the sun. This can be a tricky concept for young astronomers. Implement an activity that helps distinguish between the movements of Earth's systems around...

Why does Earth experience summer, fall, winter, and spring? Using an informative demonstration, learners see how the angle of the sun on Earth and the rotation of Earth determine the seasons. Scholars work in pairs to learn that the...

Second graders participate in a variety of activities to explore the Solar System in this unit.

Students examine the roles of the immune system in keeping the body healthy. They see how engineers contribute to this process by creating antibiotics, and vaccinations. They discuss how an astronauts' immune system may be suppressed...

Scientists could measure the diameter of the sun before they knew its distance. Scholars construct a simple mirror box to measure the diameter for themselves. They compare this measurement with the official size, listed in a...

Students receive pre-cut templates of cardboard with appropriate diameters of each planet and the sun. They use multi-colored construction paper, scissors, yarn, and other art supplies to create their own models of planets. When students...

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...

How do different parts of the world experience day and night? Introduce scholars to the concept of global citizenship while teaching about animal behavior with discussion of nocturnal and diurnal animals. Then, learners complete...

Get to know our galaxy with an astronomy-themed, hands-on activity. Scholars watch an informative video, answer questions, and construct a model of the Milky Way in order to examine its contents and the distance inside it.  

Your pupils may believe that you and their parents are the oldest things in the universe, but surprise! There are elements of the universe that are even older. Elementary scientists create a class timeline to demonstrate the...

Ninth graders examine the electrolysis of water by completing an experiment.  In this water lesson students will explain how hydrogen can be extracted from water and how energy flows through an electrolysis system. 

Passive solar heating is a technology that's been in use for thousands of years. Here, elementary schoolers are exposed to this type of heating, the materials that are used in passive solar heating, and they study how engineers design...

Are we alone in the universe? This brief informational text on extraterrestrial theory has been split into seven sections to help scholars practice note taking. They read the statements, underlining key words. Then, using the graphic...

The climate at the equator is hotter than the climate at the poles, but why? The lesson goes in depth, explaining how the angles of illumination relate to the heating rate at different latitudes and seasons. Scholars use a strong lamp,...

Can people really measure time just by using the sun? Scholars venture outside on a nice, sunny day to build sundials and learn how people measured time 600 years ago. The class builds two different sundials while gaining practice with...

Oceans absorb half of the carbon dioxide and 80 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Scholars learn how and why the oceans store heat more effectively than land and how they help mitigate global warming. Pupils...

One of the key objectives of Europe's Copernicus Earth program is to monitor the temperatures of the oceans and seas on Earth. Young scholars learn the effects of different heat capacities through two experiments. These experiments...