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This activity shows students how strong the hollow bones of birds are. Students roll computer paper into a hollow tube (3 of them), tape a paper plate to the top of the rolls (which are standing up), then add pennies to the plate to see how strong the "bones" are. This is a great activity to help explain to students that birds' bones are hollow in order to allow them less weight for flight and hollow bones require less food for the bird. But their bones are still strong! I like this activity because it's hands on and I think it would be engaging for children learning about birds and their bones. It's also an easy activity to put together.

Giant deadly hornets, gorgeous fluttering butterflies and stealthy crawling stink bugs: readers cannot tear their eyes away from these fascinating creatures. They can discover these and more mesmerizing world insects in Expedition: Insects, an e-book written, illustrated and animated by the Smithsonian Science Education Center. Read now! This app is so cool! The weather lab allows for students to come up with possible outcomes for weather in North America. It is a very interactive, fun, and realistic app. First students pick a an ocean current, air mass 1, and then air mass 2. After, the students are asked what they should wear or what they should be preparing for with the weather situation they just created. Ex. would be, If I live along the East Coast of the US I should... and then they would pick from the options given. This app would be awesome to incorporate when learning about weather. It allows for students to create different weather situations and then also they have to predict what will happen with the situation. I think it would be a great opportunity to have student collaborate with peers and come up with 3-5 weather situations and they should record the weather they created, what they predict will happen, and what actually happened with the weather. I think students would really enjoy this app in the classroom considering its not your typical weather game or activity.

What I love about this science activity is that students are able to make their own bio domes from household items. By using, 3 two- liter soda bottles, a soda cap, soil, and something to plant, students will be able to grow their own plant. Along the way they will learn about the water cycle and how this infrastructure helps promote the grow of an organism. For an activity I would sort students into groups of three. Each group will bring their own supplies. In class they will construct their bio domes and plant a specimen that I will provide them. Once the construction aspect is completed we will set each labeled bio dome aside. Throughout the weeks to come each group, ever student, will keep record of how much their plant is growing. In their records they will summarize what they observe and what they think is going to happen.

This activity has each student growing their own plant. I was looking at the standards and I thought that this activity would work for 3-LS1-1, which says that students should develop models to describe that organisms have unique live cycles but have a common birth, reproduction, and death. I think that it would be interesting for the students to see how different plants grow from a seed and then develop unique characteristics. This activity would also teach the students responsibility, because they would be in charge of taking care of the plant. I would envision using this activity by splitting the students into groups and giving each of them a plant to care for, the students would also be in charge of keeping a weekly journal.

SC.E.1.2.3 Students know that our Sun is a star and that the energy of the Sun can be captured as a source of heat and light on Earth (e.g. plants, solar panels) Students will have a basic understanding of the vocabulary words sun, solar system, star, planet, asteroid, comet, orbit, axis.

This is super interesting. It has many visuals and simple notes to explain the movement of objects.This could easily be a replacement for a power point for the day. There are also quizzes and games students can play or work through after the lesson to help assess their learning.

What do you mean "power point for the day"? Where in your instruction would this be used?

In this inquisitive and hands-on lesson the students get to learn about heredity visually. Mini "creatures" are made out of craft supplies of different colors, and on the first day students observe and take note of their characteristics. Upon opening the creatures (plastic eggs) up the students find seeds/babies. The next morning when class begins the students go to their creatures and notice the seeds have turned into mini monsters and resemble their parents in many ways. Day three even digs into survival characteristics. I love this lesson, and personally think it would be fun for many different ages. Heredity is often confusing for young students, and by giving them a visual representation that they can see and feel the class can become engaged. I like how this lesson can be easily spread over a three day period, and it would help enhance the heredity/genetics unit as a whole. I would go to the activity at the beginning of each period and let the children explore the new changes as an intro into science for the day.

I loved this 3 day lesson/unit on heredity. This lesson breaks down a complicated concept by using different colored easter eggs and google eyes to create a "species." Students notice similarities and differences over three generations of the species and are introduced to the idea of "traits." What I loved most about this source was that it linked this lesson to three different STEM standards. This way, students are having fun with science and you are still assessing them on the correct skills! -After reading some of the comments on the post, people did bring up the fact that some students could be adopted and not look like the rest of their family. If this is the case for one of my students, I would use that as an opportunity to talk about what makes us all different and special, and how that student is going to pass on a special set of traits.

This website contains a video about food chains and food webs. It explains what producers, consumers, scavengers, decomposers, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, etc. are. It is very kid friendly because of the colors and easy accessibility. I like this website because it is interactive for young students. I would use this as a resource in my classroom to introduce the topic of food chains because it is a fun video the students will enjoy.

This website has activities, videos, and games directly related to food chains. I would use this site for resources and ideas for activities. I would also use it for the videos to show the students to better understand the concept of food chains.

This is a link to the field trip page on James S. McDonnell Planetarium's website. The planetarium is connected to the Science Center in St. Louis.  They offer planetarium shows followed by a Q&A that would be great for a 4th or 5th grade class to experience.

This website could be used in a 5th grade astronomy lesson.  This is an interactive website that students could go to to find out information on our solar system and surrounding areas. You could create a worksheet that could be a website scavenger hunt that the students would have to complete while exploring the website.

I would use this video in a 5th grade lesson on our solar system.  This video discusses the formation of our solar system and then follows through with information on all of the individual planets.  This video could be incorporated into a science lesson very easily without being too distracting due to the short length of the video.

This is an identification game that students could play to familiarize them with the location of the planets in our solar system.

This is an awesome book that the students could complete over the course of a few days, while learning about the solar system.  The book has a page for each planet in our solar system that requires the students to find out information about each planet.  This is a great activity that allows students to become familiar with the rest of our solar system in a way more hands on than just reading a chapter.

This is another lesson I found that would be great for a 5th grade astrology lesson.  This is a complete lesson that has students do research no computers do gather information on the solar system, after they have been through guided discussions.

I couldn't bookmark the individual activity but the Scale Distances in the Solar System lesson would be great to use in the classroom to demonstrate and give students a visual on the size of our solar system and the distance between our planets.

This is a game for students to see the food chain in action. The students choose the correct organism in the chain. I would use this as a game for the students to do on their own during computer time, or I could put it up on the projector and do the game as a class.

This link has lesson plans and activities that would useful in learning about food chains. It also has standards, objectives, and rubrics for the teacher to use. I like this link because it will be useful to guide off of for lesson plans, objectives, and activities. You can use the lesson plans and activities, or you can change them for your liking.

This is a video that could be used in a 5th grade science class, during an astronomy lesson.  This video is a great visual to show students the actual size of our solar system and the relation of the planets.  This video is well edited with music that is not too distracting like the other videos that I found.  This video could be use during almost any lesson talking about the solar system or galaxies.

* This lesson is focused on the identification of structures and functions that plants and need to survive. It lets the students think about what job each part of the plant has to survive along with how important it is for each plant part to do its job or else the plant will not. I selected this resource because I thought it would make for a great introduction lesson for teaching students about plants and how their internal and external structures help them to support survival, growth, behavior, and overall reproduction (4-LS1-1). The structure and processes of plants and animals is my main focus of this lesson, but I feel that this lesson would benefit the teaching of plants.

A free animated video presentation to show students how dinosaur bones become fossils. I liked this video because it really enhances the teaching of how bones eventually become fossils and will help students gain a better understanding of the long process and natural forces at work. It would be a great resource to use in conjunction with teaching students biological evolution (3-LS4).