Pbs Teachers: Scientific American: Wild Places: Growing Prairie

Sort and classify insects and spiders by characteristics, using stamps from the United States postal stamp Classic Collection. Create a taxonomic key to distinguish between any four animals.

Investigate the scientific principles of biospheres, and observe the effects of biological processes on closed systems.

Explore possible explanations of salmon's homing instincts. Record a path based upon olfactory cues, discriminating between and following specific scents placed at critical junctures along the designated path.

Explore the scientific breakthroughs in understanding the genes that control the way we age. Collect your own samples of active nematodes by assembling and using a device called a Baermann Funnel, then observe the behavior of these worms.

Explore scientific research saying that continued brain activity may delay or slow the loss of memory function. Investigate and practice different techniques to increase recall.

Explore the characteristics of binaural hearing and discover how two ears are utilized in determining the direction of a sound's origin. Produce auditory illusions by reversing and extending the detection site for each ear.

Explore the relationship between pressure and vessel diameter and create a model that represents how elevated blood pressure may affect weakened vessels. Design and critique a repair device.

Explore the vocabulary and vocalizations in chimpanzee communications and connect them to emotions. Develop and participate in a field study of animal behavior based on observations and interactions with dogs

Explore the concept of the calorie. Determine the calories/gram of the burned food by measuring its mass, and make conclusions about the experimental design.

Research color awareness in animals. Design a set of experiments to determine if animals see colors by using a computer-based paint program to create specific color characteristics, based on their "gray values".