This is a fun video for the students showing the food chain. I think the students will enjoy the pictures and clips and it will get them excited about the subject.
This is a fun, very easy experiment for students to try when learning about the laws of motion. Students are able to see first hand Newton's first law of motion. Students can do this experiments in groups and discuss why the penny doesn't fall.
This website is a branch of The Butterfly House located in the Missouri Botanical Gardens. This website has an amazing list of classes/programs and their descriptions offered for grades K-6. The programs are designed to foster a greater understanding of butterflies and their importance to the balance of life on Earth. There is also information about times, fees, and dates. I think this is a great way to enhance a field trip by giving the students a fun, hands-on, and interactive experience.
This is a great way for you to have students to work together to figure out the velocity of tornadoes and find out what goes into the forming of tornadoes. It is a fun lesson that will have the students engaged and keep them interested on learning about tornadoes.
This is a project to use (instead of the solar system diagrams) to show how the solar system looks in 3D. This project seems very interesting in that it is not the same as all the other solar system projects and it's a new way to show the solar system. Also all types of learners can learn from this project. As a teacher I would have the students make the snow globe, explain their process and what they were thinking before and after it was complete, and was it an easy project or hard. Also, I would include a written paper in the requirement for the snow globe project. In doing so, students can revisit their information on the planets and solar system as well as see what they do or do not know about each planet. I like this project because it fun and different from what is the usual solar system project.
This activity allows students to work hands-on to observe and to collect data. It would be a fun activity that could engage students. This is also uses materials that would be accessible to students at home. Therefore, they could always show others.
DiscoveryKids.com offers many videos about sharks. The videos show sharks in and out of their natural habit and everyday life. The videos show how sharks eat and survive, how sharks look, and the different types of sharks that exist. I would combine these videos with Shark Week as a fun learning experience for the students. The videos would be used in numerous ways. I would have the students write in their science journals, take quizzes about a particular shark, draw pictures, complete a research paper, and complete other activities during that week about sharks.
This activity requires students to go on a nature walk and collect helicopter seeds of various sizes. The students measure and examine the seeds in the classroom and then make predictions about which size will spin faster to the ground. Students then test their hypotheses by dropping the seeds from the same height and recording the flight patterns. This is a great activity because it teaches students various scientific ideas, plus it is fun! I would use it as an opportunity to get out of the classroom and also do some great learning!
Apple Oobleck made With Apple Sauce
This is a different way to approach introducing oobleck into the classroom. Students could participate in all parts of this activity. They could help make the oobleck, explore it, and, with teacher permission, possibly even taste their creation! This would also be a very cool way to explore the 5 senses with your students or just a fun activity to do during the fall.
I think this could be used in kindergarten up through second grade.
This website is an interactive website that looks at climate through videos, games and articles. It focuses on how climate and weather affect land, water, and animals. I chose this website because there were a lot of cool pictures and activities I thought would be fun for my students. It also has a section that helps educators build lesson plans that align with NGSS, which I think is a valuable asset. It stated that it was geared toward upper elementary, but while looking through it I felt any student, Kindergarten and up, would benefit.
This video/song on YouTube is about the different choices in weather. It explores sunny, cloudy, rainy, windy, and snowy. Set to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle I believe it would capture the attention of students and be a song they could sing daily. I could play this video during our calendar time as a fun way to introduce the weather each morning. I selected it because it provides a different way of learning, it's colorful, and catchy. It also includes some words with the music. These words could easily be integrated into my word wall.
This activity, designed by ZOOM, allows students to help the environment by cutting down their paper garbage, and recycling it themselves into a new piece of paper. The instructor must gather the materials for the students, and must be available to help the students throughout the process. The students must follow step-by-step instructions on how to transform their original piece of garbage paper, into a brand new piece of paper.
I am a strong advocate of recycling. I can see myself using this activity in my future classroom to show students that anyone can save our planet, and have fun in the process.
Skeletons are the structures that hold our bodies together and are very important to keeping us healthy. Students can play do an online interactive activity while learning about moving and growing by sorting and labeling the bones of a human skeleton. For added difficulty, or to use this link associated with a different unit, students are also able to label the skeletons of other animals such as an insect, fish or horse.
I would use this website in a lower elementary classroom for a quick, fun assessment on the bones.
This is a fun activity that will show students the process of rain. They will take a glass of water, place shaving cream on top to represent the clouds, and drop food coloring through the "clouds" to depict rain. The lesson is also partnered with a book about clouds that describes each different type of cloud. I chose this resource because it will be something the students can get excited about while also being able to watch exactly what it looks like when rain comes out of the clouds. I would use this resource when introducing photosynthesis.
This a simple experiment that can be used for younger students to show them how sunlight refracts when it passes through water. Children are often amazed by rainbows, so why not let them make their own rainbow while learning how and why they appear.
This resource is game the students can play that helps them identify the food chain and what animals hunt others. I think this resource would be used as a good extra activity for if the students finish an activity early. This is a great introduction to the food chain to let the students guess and explore what they already know. They could journal after about what they found and if they were wrong or if they were right and characteristics about the animals.
In this activity, students are shown a picture of wildlife and are asked to click on eight living things. Students can click on animals or plants. I chose this activity because younger students could use this as a starting point when learning about wildlife. I envision this being used in the lower grades as a beginning activity.
This multimedia learning app teaches children about the water cycle. This app allows children to both learn about the water cycle, and test their knowledge. For each stage of the water cycle, the children learn about the process, fun facts about the stage, as well as how it can be seen in nature. Ie.: "Precipitation can be rain, snow, hail, etc."
This app was the awarded the 2014 American Association of School Librarians Best Apps for Teaching & Learning in the STEM Category.
This animated science movie for Kindergarten to 3rd grade classes helps students understand magnets, magnetic fields, and poles. The video explains many things about magnets including that magnets attract things that are made of iron and have two poles. I chose this because it touches on so many facts about magnets in one fun video. I would use this video to introduce the idea of how magnets work and what uses they have.
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.
This flyer shows you how to grow a plant in your classroom. This a great idea to help younger students understand the life cycle of a plant. I remember planting something in our second grade classroom one time. We took turns watering it, which was always fun and allowed us to play a part in the plants growth. I would do the same for my students.