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Located in Makanda, Illinois, Touch of Nature has an Environmental Education program that, "offers exciting outdoor learning experiences in natural resource education, nature interpretation and resource management. Courses are designed to increase environment awareness, appreciation and stewardship. The do offer lodging (for a fee) to take older students for a fun learning experience. I don't think it's ever too early to get kids thinking about how they effect the environment so if I were in a school close to Makanda, I would take students as early as 3rd grade, however this would be an extremely cool field trip for grades 8 and up.

This website contains a video about an ocean food chain. It is kid friendly and somewhat humorous. I chose this website because young students would enjoy watching this video and still gain knowledge of food chains. It only covers an ocean food chain, failing to touch on other environments. However, I would still use this in my classroom because I think young students would enjoy it. I would allow them to watch it after they finish an assignment early.

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 site has it all! Everything that a teacher could possibly ask for when it comes to teaching space in the classroom. It includes projects, games, images, videos, lessons, and facts about the planets, and quizzes. I picked it because of the numerous amount of ideas and the various ways to teach it. This would even be a site that I could reccommend to parents as a resource for them to use at home. In the classroom, I could allow some students to explore this site on their own if they finished homework early or have free time.

This app could work great for teacher or student-directed learning. It shows the universe in a way that is more engaging that simple, flat pictures. It's a versitile app that can be adapted for a variety of in-class or at-home activities. Students can use it to find out how close planets/contellations are to a given object in space or they can simply pick a planet/constellation they want to learn about and teach the class about it. It could be used as a great introductory or motivational tool. It can also be used as a fun reward for students who finish their work early.

This website is mostly for the students. They are able to play a food chain game where they have to decide which things depend on others and where they are on the food chain. This would be good for students who finish assignments early or need help understanding the food chain

Experiments for very early learners may be a little hard to think of. This page is full of ideas with materials you will need, ways to tie it all together, and how to get the students to understand the big picture.

Many of these are more crafts projects than experiments, although they have potential linkages to science.

This resource has a huge collection of early elementary science activities, projects, and labs. It also includes homework that is less pencil-and-paper based and more activity/exploratory based. Each category has different types of lessons outlined within it. Each of these lessons in meant to be 90 minutes long but they can each be changed very easily.

Free elementary science activities and interactive educational science games for kids. This is a good website to use in the classroom for down time. There are many games, puzzles, and worksheets for students. I would use this in my classroom for students who finish a project early and need something to do.

Online puzzles and word finds, and a lot of printable coloring sheets. Some background information. Some are science related, some not. A LOT of ads around edges of pages, and tricky embedded links as well, which makes me leery of the idea of setting students loose on this to work independently.

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 lesson is about the importance of recycling and how to do so. Students get to explore the physical properties of objects and decide whether they can be recycled or not. Then, the students get to work together to make recycled paper. I think that this lesson is important to young students because if they learn to recycle at an early age, then they can carry that with them as they grow older and continue to recycle.

This resource is a comprehensive series of tutorials illustrating the components of the human body systems. This could serve as a very useful tool for remediating students as well as for early science learners. The color graphics help to guide students through the respective systems by distinguishing the various organs in each system. A useful tool that can also summarize classroom lectures.

Diagrams of body systems are available with or without labels and are also printable.

This is an easy-to-follow, step-by-step explanation on genetics and inheritance. Each concept is briefly but succinctly explained allowing students to learn the concepts in small doses. I selected this resource because of its foundational nature and supporting graphics. This makes it suitable for learners at varying levels but particularly for early biology learners. It could be used effectively in any introductory DNA lesson.

Each of the many sections of the site includes explanation, animation, biography of a related scientist, and more. Quite in-depth and very high quality material.

This website actually contains a list of the "10 iPad Apps for Teaching Kids About Science." This app is listed as number five but I feel it is probably the coolest. This app allows you to view the moon from many different angles. You can view it from Earth or get closer with satellite views. The coolest thing about this app is that it is HD. So you can zoom in and really examine the moon's surface. There are places where you can read facts about people and modules that have landed on the moon. This app could be used by students of any age. It would be a valuable tool in a high school astronomy class and I think it would pair nicely with that Moon Dust activity I posted before. I could simply show my kindergarten students what the moon's surface looks like and then allow them to play with "Moon Dust." I would probably use this as an early lesson in a unit on the moon. It is not stated on this site how much this app costs exactly, just that it is under $20.

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.

This unit on weather includes three days worth of lesson plans. Each day corresponds with a specific book about weather. One of the books it includes is "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". Assuming most children saw the movie, I would ask questions to access what they may already know about weather and if the movie is comparable to the weather we experience. These lessons also include weather observation and opportunities to write about their observations. I chose these lessons because they include extensions, assignments, and assessments. I can see myself using this in the classroom with my students because I feel that using literature makes a lesson stronger. It draws the kids in, and enables me to ask questions to access prior knowledge.

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 is an iPhone app that helps kids learn about plants. It examines the life cycle of a plant, different types of plants, and allows students to grow their own plant. I selected this source because it is very colorful and has good information about the plant process. It allows kids to watch videos and create their own plant. It seems like a good app for $0.99. I would use this app in my classroom to get students engaged and to review material about plants.  I could also use it as an activity for early finishers.

Looks like the price has changed to free!

This website lists the different biomes and what animals are contained in each. It is very informational and goes into detail about each animal. I chose this website for the fact that it lists the animals in each biome. It would be a great resource to use for a food chain or food web project. I would have my students create a poster making a food chain or food web. They can use this website as a resource to discover what animals live in certain biomes. I would assign each student a biome and their project would consist of placing the animals present in the correct order, to make a food chain.

Seems advanced for early elementary school due to the amount of reading. I would advise for grades 4 and up.

Enjoy our range of fun science experiments for kids that feature awesome hands-on projects and activities that help bring the exciting world of science to life. Plant Seeds & Watch Them Grow Learn about seed germination with this fun science experiment for kids. _____ The link posted is a site about planting a type of seed and watching it grow over time. I like the idea behind the seed germination activity because it would allow students to see the development of a plant from its original stage. I would incorporate this experiment at the beginning of a unit on the growth of plants as my way to capture my students attention. This activity could be used for K thru 5th (ish) grade. In the early grades, students could observe the growth of a plant from its seed. In later grades, the students could compare the growth pattern of different types of seeds. We could either plant one or a few seeds as a class, or each student could be responsible for their own seeds.