Observing the Land Over the Seasons

Get your class outside to observe their surroundings with a lesson highlighting weather patterns and seasonal changes. First, learners take a weather walk to survey how the weather affects animals, people, plants, and trees during...

"Humans have become a geologic agent comparable to erosion and [volcanic] eruptions ..." Paul J. Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist. Using Landsat imagery, scholars create a grid showing land use type, such as urban,...

As part of a unit on climate, this ongoing activity takes the kids outdoors to make observations along a selected walking route. They repeat the walk several times over a number of months and take note of changes that occur. At the end...

Why does Earth have so many seasons? Learn about the importance and changes of our planet's climate with a series of learning activities, which focus on connecting seasons to past experiences, making scientific observations, and...

Assess your young scientists' understanding of the difference between observation and inference with this 20-question multiple choice quiz. It reviews a variety of physics and astronomy concepts, such as solar eclipses and sunspots, the...

Turn your classroom into a live demonstration of how the earth and sun interact to create the four seasons. Using a globe, a light source, and a series of constellation cards, super scientists discover how the motion of these...

Plants take cues from the environment—change in daylight hours and temperature—to complete their seasonal life cycles. Lesson four in the series of six has classes collect phenology data on plants. After taking initial observations,...

Note the way that plants change during the season by adopting a plant on your school campus. After your class chooses their plant, they research the plant's needs, how it differs from other plants, find ways to support their plant's...

The first remote sensors were people in hot air balloons taking photographs of Earth to make maps. Expose middle school learners to space exploration with the use of remote sensing. Groups explore and make observations of a new planet by...

Fourth graders measure the change in the size of their shadow over time. They visit a fixed structure and record the date, the time, and the measurement of the length of their shadow. They do this over the course of the school year. They...