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BrainPop Jr. is an interactive website that is aligned with the Common Core Standards. It includes lesson plans, games, movies, quizzes, and other types of learning activities. The site also includes away for teachers to keep up with the progress of their students. There are different ways to purchase membership. The membership categories include, parents, home school, single classroom, school, district, or virtual school. There are also ways to receive funding. I would use this site as an alternative way to keep the students involved. I would only utilize this site in class only because all students do not have internet and computer access outside of school.

This dairy farm is located in Trenton, IL and would be an excellent learning experience for children. You can set up a tour with the dairy by calling the number listed on the website. I envision taking this field trip during a unit on the food groups. It could also be used as a single, more specific, lesson about the process of creating yogurt, cheese, and milk. Students would also have the opportunity to taste a free sample of the yogurt after the tour. I can remember going on a field trip similar to this one when I was in the second or third grade. I would probably also use it for that grade level. It does not say the cost of the tour on the website but I was told that it is inexpensive.

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.

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!

This site is interactive. Students click on the different planets in our solar system and learn interesting facts about each. This is an interesting activity using technology in the classroom. Students can also explore the site for even more interesting space facts. I like this website because there is so much on it for students to explore. I also feel it would be a good supplement to class discussions about space.

This website is great. It was created by a meteorologist specifically with children in mind. She wanted them to be able to learn more about "the fascinating world of weather." I couldn't pick just one link, as I feel the entire website is incredible educational.

This website was designed by meteorologist Crystal Wicker. She designed it with kids in mind, but it's also an excellent resource for teachers. It answers questions about tornadoes, lightening, clouds, volcanoes, and much more. It also provides games, flashcards, jokes, photos, and experiments. I chose this site because I think it is a great, quick reference for early elementary teachers. It would also be and asset for a middle elementary student doing research. I would use this in my classroom as a resource to questions being asked by my students, or questions I need answered. I would also pull some of the weather experiments and use them when applicable.

The Field Museum is a science centered museum located in Chicago, IL. This specific tour allows students to investigate how DNA analysis has changed our understanding of the relatedness of life on Earth through hands on activities. The students will be able to extract DNA in a lab and interview scientists. This field trip supports NGSS MS-LS4-2. I chose this location for a field trip because it engages students' learning and furthers their knowledge of DNA through hands on activity. I would take the students to participate in this DNA extraction after we finished our lesson on DNA. This way, they would be able to be even further engaged with questioning and answering with the scientists and apply our textbook knowledge to the activity.

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.

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 lesson plan that will provide students with an understanding of how light interacts with different objects. While experimenting with different objects, students will be able to see the relationships between light and the shadow that the objects casts. In addition to learning about shadows, students will be able to tell if objects are reflective, transparent, or opaque. I like this lesson plan because it breaks down the lesson into multiple days and offers ways for the students to further their connections by experimenting at home. I would use this lesson in the classroom while teaching about sources of light.

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.

This game shows different living organisms that can be in the food chain and can be a fun way to add upon your lesson concerning food chains.

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 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 resource shows instructions, materials and photos for creating a shoe box habitat. The website lists that this craft is for 1st graders, but I think that it could be just as easily used in a 2nd grade classroom. Students get to choose which type of habitat they would like to create and are able to work on it at school and home. I selected this resource because I feel that it would be a great activity to reinforce 2-LS4-1. This craft would not be necessarily a lesson, but rather something that ties into the after math of learning about animal/plant habitats. I would use this resource as either an end of the unit craft to discuss in the class and compare/contrast each others, or as an extra credit project to do at home.

This website allows students to interact and learn a lot about plants. It is very interdisciplinary. I selected this resource because I think it would be fun for kids and grab their attention. I would use this resource during a unit on plants, and this website alone could be used for at least a week to talk about all of the different things that are involved with plants. I think students would have a good understanding of plants after going through the different lessons of this website. 

Tons of content, which requires a LOT of reading! I would up this to grades 3 and above, I think. Especially like the bilingual aspect!

Interactive website to help develop kids in the subject of astronomy.

This website has several information about the solar system and space. It could be useful to both the teacher and students. For teachers, it has a lot of useful information to use while planning/presenting a lesson. For the students there are several different links to play game and learn about the solar system and space.

Once students have learned to observe weather, they can build their own weather tools through the directions on this website. They can record their own weather data and understand how we find temperature, wind speed, cloud type, humidity, etc. Teachers could incorporate this into future lesson plans to engage students about weather and give them a hands-on experience into the world of a meteorologist.

I like the opportunity for students to make their own weather instruments. They could do this in class, or as a family project and then monitor different aspects of the weather at home as well.

As you hold your phone up and point it towards the sky, Star Walk Kids follows your motions using the built-in gyroscope to match the map on your screen to the stars seen from your location. Cartoon-style interface and friendly voice of the narrator effortlessly guide you through the night sky. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The winner of 8 awards, Star Walk Kids is a great astronomy app for students! Kids can learn about planets, stars, and constellations. The app is informational and interactive and completely kid friendly with engaging graphics and colors. I love that this app speaks to the operator and helps to verbally label items, so that children will know how to pronounce a name. The most incredible part of this app, in my opinion, is that it is available in ten different languages. I know that if I had a non-English-speaking student in my class, I would be thankful to have an app that offered a comfortable language for that student. Throught the vitotechnology link, one can access the app's manual to better understand its features and how to operate it. This app does cost $2.99, but I believe that is a small price to pay for such a wonderful app. The following is a YouTube link to a review video that goes through some of the app's functions. This video might be nice to view in order to get a better feel of the app. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d9zUbXsY6U