Group items tagged

The concept of metamorphosis is fascinating to children of all ages. Help your child's creativity take flight as she makes her very own butterfly life cycle. _____________________________________________________________________ I think this is a really cute activity/craft to use when learning about life cycles. This activity allows students to create their own butterfly life cycle with just a paper plate, dry pasta, and crayons. Students use different types of dry pasta to represent the different phases of a butterfly's life cycle. I chose this resource because I think it provides a really good visual for what each stage of the butterfly life cycle looks like. It's important for students to not only learn the material, but understand the material. I think this activity allows students to understand the butterfly life cycle better and visualize what each stage looks like. This resource could be used during a lesson about life cycles. The butterfly life cycle is short and easy for students to learn, so it would be a good life cycle to teach to students. This resource would be a good hands-on activity to add to the lesson.

I really like the butterfly life cycle coloring page on this site, especially for younger elementary students. The information presented about the butterfly life cycle is also very good along with the videos. I especially like the link to purchase live butterfly kits and would definitely want to do this in my classroom.

This lesson deepens students' understanding of the similarities and differences in the life cycles of organisms. The lesson begins with a reading of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar Next, students use a video to study the developmental stages of frogs, dragonflies, and butterflies. _____________ This lesson plan grabbed my attention because it begins with a book by Eric Carle and we just discussed his books in one of my other classes at McKendree. This is a two day lesson. The lesson plan begins by gaining the students interested by reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carl. There is a corresponding video which explains the life cycles of frogs, dragonflies, and butterflies. Then, there is an activity to hand out to the class. In groups they follow the activity to explain their assigned organism, then they explain their findings to the class. I like this lesson plan because it is very detailed. I would use this in my class when studying life cycles.

This lesson explores the life cycle and traits of pumpkins. The class first makes a flip chart that shows the life cycle of a pumpkin. The next day the class could go to a local pumpkin patch and pair up with a partner to investigate one pumpkin per group. They would look at how many lines are on each pumpkin, the texture of the pumpkin and the color. Then the class would come back and create a graph to show what they discovered in the pumpkin patch. This is a great way to show the students the life cycle of a pumpkin and allow them to see that every pumpkin has unique traits.

This site is great! It gives a very cute animated lesson about butterfly life cycles and then allows you to play games to practive what you've learned! This would be great for a kindergarten or early elementary classroom and could be done individually or on a SmartBoard as a class as well.

This fun game for elementary students shows the students how different kinds of animals or insects go through their different life cycles. It would be very good for kids who need to review how the life cycle works.

This is an activity for the first day or as an introduction to the scientific method or to just allow students to work in groups so that you can get to know them better. I usually do all instructions verbally and don't require any written documents for turning in. __________________________ This is a cute activity to use for smaller aged students to introduce them to the scientific method with little prep work from the instructor. All the teacher needs is gummy worms, life savors, paper clips, and plastic cups. Sam (the worm) is stuck on a boat (the cup) and the life jacket (life savor) is under the cup. The students will use paper clips to retrieve the life jacket and put it on Sam to save him. While doing this, students will work with a partner to explore ways to save Sam. I would use the link below as it goes along with the lesson and gives questions for the students to answer and record during their exploration to save Sam. The worksheet can be tailored to match the appropriate age group conducting the experiment. https://docs.google.com/document/d/15ahlJ9CSEB31IPgJOFO2LW62K5PoxbN6hosNneO2tRc/edit?hl=en_US I think this would be a fun activity that would allow the instructor to see how the students work together and who is taking the lead role. At the same time, the students are being introduced to creating an hypothesis, recording their observations, and coming to conclusions. I would probably use questions from the above link for higher grades such as 2nd - 5th. If I did this activity with K and 1st grade, I probably would just discuss vocabulary terms as well as their thoughts and observations during group discussion versus having them document on paper.

This activity is to reinforce the stages of the life cycle of vegetation for lower level elementary students. This activity gives students the opportunity to be creative as they color and explain the life cycle in their own words. It also sets up the students to succeed and reinforce topics because it requires that they use certain vocabulary words in their writings. I think I really would have enjoyed the freedom that this activity gives the students when I was a student. The following is the original explanation of the activity.

remove science tag, since you have biology tag that is more clear. remove k-5 tag and re-tag as k-2 and 3-5.

Students create a class book about aquatic life in or near local river(s). This lesson would be broken into several parts (classroom lecture followed by a trip to a local water source). I like this lesson because it gets the students out of the classroom and exploring our environment. This lesson is a great way to teach students about microscopic life forms in addition to aquatic life. I like how the lesson included journals to document findings.

This resource is a field trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Students can tour the gardens, learn about plants, and take classes. I chose this because it would give the students an opportunity to see the plants that they are learning about in real life. I would use this field trip as a supplement to a unit about plants.

Taking a field trip to The Botanical Gardens will let the students see plants and their pollinators in real life. I would use this field trip to wrap up my lessons on plants needing sunlight and water and also the role of insects and birds while pollinating flowers. Before the field trip begins, I will have my students bring a notebook and pencil with them. They will write down anything they observe. They could write if they saw a butterfly on a flower, or if a flower looked dry because it was in the sun too much. I want my students to put what they learned into a real life context. I really liked the idea of a field trip because students get to leave school and observe what they have been learning. It is always fun to get out a desk and do some hands-on observing/learning.

This site is a great resource for teachers planning a caterpillar/butterfly unit. It's actually two units and it breaks each unit down into parts. It also contains links to supplemental material to use during the lesson, including a slideshow, images, and student sheets.

Free streaming video that shows the actual fossils from an ancient sea in the middle of Indiana. Put the mouse on highlighted sections of the rocks and a depiction of the fossil comes to life along with a brief summarization of what kind of fossil it is and how it lived. I really liked this program because it shows how different our world was millions of years ago, and the fact that the program animates whichever fossil you choose, brings the past to life. It would be a great resource to use when teaching biological evolution (3-LS4).

This is a PDF of the LIfe of a Bean Plant. It shows the cycle on the first sheet and then quizzes the students on the order. I think it will be a good activity for the students to complete when talking about plant life.

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 website is interactive and gives students real life situations where Punnett Squares are useful, such as breading. Also, it shows students how to create Punnett Squares and then allows students to try it on there on. I like how this website gives students feedback right away and it is making Punnett Squares applicable to the real world. Also, I like how it asked students to answer the chance for an offspring to have a certain characteristic. I would use this resource to help teach Punnett squares. It would be a tool for me to show students that this activity is relatable outside of the class, but it would be engaging at the same time.

This website gives the teacher a free printable booklet for students. In the activity, the students have to put in order (sequence) the life cycle of plants. This is exactly what the lesson as a whole is about so I feel that this would be perfect for them to make just as an enforcer. If the student would ever forget or be confused, they could look at their booklet as a refresher.

This site gives a variety of ideas for caterpillar, butterfly, and butterfly life cycle art projects.

Eyewitness book on matter. Allows kids to explore a world of information through pictures and real life application.

This is a link to the Missouri Botanical Garden website which makes for a great field trip. At the Missouri Botanical Garden, students explore plants from around the world and go into greenhouses. There is also a Children's Garden geared specifically toward younger students. I selected this resource because I have experience with the Missouri Botanical Garden. Kids really enjoy exploring and learning about the plants. A field trip to the gardens could be used to bolster units involving plant life, photosynthesis, and changing seasons.  I could use this resource at any grade level because the Garden does a good job at having activities for kids of various ages.

This is a video/interactive game on BrainPOP Jr. about plant adaptions. It gives an overview of what a plant needs to survive and show different kinds of plants adapt to areas that don't have the necessary elements to live. The school needs a subscription to use this website. Given that the school would have it, I would use this in my lesson. This is different than just the regular lesson on the life cycle; it gives the students a different view of plants that they may have never seen before.