Make sound visible with an activity that provides directions for how to build a vocal visualizer meant to create light patterns. Making noise into the visualizer causes a mirror to vibrate, reflecting a laser beam, and creating...

Want to boost your readers' comprehension skills and strategies? Look to these five pages, each with a short story and questions to answer covering main idea, facts, sequence of events, context clues, conclusions, and making...

Up it goes! Groups must design and build a windmill able to lift a weight. The packet includes discussion points to use prior to the build that cover topics such as variables, fairness, and the design process.

Use pennies to light an LED. Class members follow the provided directions to build a multi-celled battery powered by pennies. Using stacks of pennies of varying heights, pupils control the voltage of the battery to light...

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...

Young scientists learn about plate tectonics and the three different types of faults (normal, reverse, and strike-slip) using foam models. The activity also covers common types of locations where these faults are found.

Combine class members' love of crafts and reading with one innovative lesson. Scholars create a one-of-a-kind woven bookmark using cardstock paper, yarn, and a needle. 

How do cohesion and adhesion work together? The third installment of a nine-part series teaches young scientists the difference between adhesion and cohesion. They also learn how cohesion and adhesion work together to cause capillary...

How do you measure surface tension? The fifth installment of a nine-part series is an experiment where young scientists use tubes of different sizes to measure surface tension. They calculate the average and standard deviation of the...

Scholars use formulas for the area of a circle and the area of a rectangle to determine the number of pies a baker can make from a particular area of dough. They must also take into account rolling the remaining dough into a new sheet.

How long does it take to get to the end of a toilet paper roll? Pupils use their estimation strategies to find lengths of common items. For example, knowing the area of a roll of toilet paper, scholars determine the length of the full roll.

Varve: a deposit of cyclical sediments that help scientists determine historical climates. Individuals analyze the topography of a region and then study varve datasets from the same area. Using this information, they determine the...

Using paper and a pencil, produce a pop-up puppet of a groundhog that peers out and over it's burrow to tell us when Spring is coming. 

Earth's magnetic poles switch positions about every 200,000—300,000 years. In the activity, groups create a planet with a magnetic field. Once made, they use a magnetometer to determine the orientation of the planet's magnetic field....

Henry and Annie are on thin ice—literally! Read about the siblings' winter walk and the importance of staying safe with a short passage and four follow-up questions.

Huygens spacecraft landed on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005, making it the farthest landing from Earth ever made by a spacecraft. In this hands-on activity, the 12th installment of 22, groups explore how density affects speed. To do this,...

One way to identify possible volcanic activity on other planets is by testing the planet for magnetism. A science instructional activity begins with pupils constructing their own planet from a dead battery, magnets, paper, and...

Carbon dioxide is not only causing global temperatures to increase, it causes the oceans to become more acidic. Lesson focuses on the blue king crab and the fragility of the habitat due to climate change. Scholars create a concept map...

How much do you really know about our planet? Middle schoolers build up their prior knowledge about Earth, its placement in the solar system, its composition, and important geological vocabulary with an introductory earth science lesson.

Let there be light. The last installment of a seven-part series has pupils conduct an experiment on light attenuation through different numbers of transparency sheets. They then relate the results back to how X-rays measure bone density.

There are underwater rivers that flow on the ocean floor thanks to a difference in density. Scholars learn about the density in both liquids and solids in the second lesson of an 11-part series. They then determine the density of water,...

The moral of the story: listen to your parents! A concise reading passage introduces learners to Tom and the consequences of his choice to go out without a coat.

The size of a nanoparticle is difficult for pupils to grasp. A hands-on experiment is designed to give your classes perspective. Learners analyze different sports drinks for the content of electrolytes as an introduction to nanoscale....

Molecules to the Max! refers to a movie released in 2009 about the world of atoms and molecules. A helpful discovery guide provides five posters on science topics typically covered at the middle school level. It also explains the...