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This website is interactive and allows children to work together. In this activity students pair up and see what their children's eyes would look like if they had a child together. I selected this website because I thought it would reinforce some of the Punnett Squares and other genetic content covered. Also, I thought it would be fun and engaging for students to pair up and work together. I would use this resource as an activity to go along with a lesson that I taught. Students would work together to see how genetics play a role in their child.

Our eyes are using light to see various objects all the time, but when this light travels through different mediums (such as water & air) it changes direction slightly. Light refracts (or bends) when it passes from water to air. I selected this resource because I could not quite find a good field trip. I feel like this is an easy way to show the young children how objects bend when looking through other material. This is a very easy lab and experiment for young grades. I would use this lab when showing my class how objects may appear and look different when seen through different objects.

Holding your nose while tasting the potato and apple makes it hard to tell the difference between the two. Your nose and mouth are connected through the same airway which means that you taste and smell foods at the same time. Smell is often considered the least important of our five senses, and I'm sure many students would agree. I would start by taking a poll which hopefully results in a consensus that smell is the least important sense. The following activity involves giving students small pieces of apple and potato and having a partner mix up the pieces while the other student's eyes are closed. The students will then eat the pieces with their eyes closed and try to see if they can guess which food it was. The students should begin to see for themselves how important smell is for tasting foods. This activity involves very few supplies and has an easy clean up. Afterwards, I would have a class discussion about their findings.

This Dr. Seuss tale opens the eyes of the students to the world of recycling. After we read the book students will participate in a recycling relay. I chose this book because Dr. Seuss is a fun way to learn and the rhyming engages the students.

This link goes to a collection of Seuss ideas. Which are you meaning to reference here, and how would you use it? I don't see a recycling relay activity on the link.

This website is a fantastic resource to use to get the conservation status for ANY plant or animal on planet earth. Type in the common name for any animal and it will be cross-referenced to its scientific name and linked to its status. Other links include articles and sites providing information on that animal.

I really like this webpage because it shows what is going on in the world today, and because there are so many species that are endangered, threatened, etc. it can be a real eye opener for students. It may be a big motivator for students to ask why. This is a good supplement when studying biomes or the effects of human interaction in an ecology class.

This is a technology-based tool in which students can build a DNA molecule. Based on your rate of construction it calculates how long you would have to work in order to successfully transcribe the DNA in one human cell (my rate was 50 years day and night). Underneath this graphic tool there is also a large amount of material on the structure of DNA. I selected this resource because it is a great interactive tool for students to use, and I think it will help them in conceptualizing DNA related material. This tool can be used to help students understand and appreciate how rapidly and accurately DNA processes, such as transcription, occur within a cell. 

I love the fact that this tool will help students understand how rapidly this process really works. It is mind boggling that these things happen and we aren't even conscious of it. Having students perform activities like this opens their eyes to the wonders of the human body, and to some may even motivate them to ask more questions!

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.

I would love to take a class here! I worked at a daycare over the summer and we took our kids here. I wish you could have seen the excitement in their eyes when they were there. There were all kinds of interactive attractions that engaged my kids. I would also give my students a check list of attraction that I absolutely want their group to cover. This list would also have space for them to write down their questions about each attraction. We would discuss each question upon returning to the school.

This activity shows how a cloud makes rain. For this activity you fill up a jar most of the way with water. Top the water with shaving cream. Drip food coloring into the shaving cream until eventually it fills up and starts dripping through the shaving cream. I chose this activity because there are a few simple items needed, shaving cream, water, jar, food coloring which could be found around the home and would be interesting for children. This would help simplify the understanding of clouds producing rain for young children. This activity can be used during the studying clouds/weather I would use during the lesson while explaining how clouds make rain for a visual.

This lesson is so simple and adorable! It's about teaching students the types of clouds and precipitation. It gives a very simple and eye friendly teacher outline for the types of clouds and directions for a demonstration. I think this project could be taken down or up a few notches to match the age group someone was teaching. It's a very wonderful lesson for active and visual learners. It provides a bit of hands on involvement and visual demonstrations about rain fall. I would use this lesson to teach to my class as a whole, but I would love to put my student's into groups to do the experiment. I think it would be a good time for them to practice the scientific process that we would've previously discussed, by allowing them to think critically and predict what would happen to the food coloring droplets and so on.

This resource houses a view of the perfect meteorology field-trip for students. The location is The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, IL. The exhibit gives loads of visuals of and scientific background for a variety of storms. The link attached is about the whole exhibit, as you click on what you would more directly want to study the website shows you how students can explore. The exhibit doesn't just cover storms, it also covers atoms and ways to harness energy. If you explore the tornado section you will get to see and manipulate a giant tornado. You also get to make your own table top tornado to explore farther. Finally they have wind tunnels you can get inside to feel the force of the wind. In the lightning section they explore charge. Not only do they get to see and hear a lightning storm inside, but they also get to experiment with magnets and levitation! There is a ton of information on fires including how some fires in nature aren't so bad. Students even get to use reactions with fire to create a fireworks display. The list of fun goes on and on! In the sunlight section solar power is discussed. Students can even watch a tsunami in a tank, and an avalanche in a disk. The exhibit is completely educational and makes many connections to the real world. I would use this to close a year in science, probably right after a unit on weather where students have studied all of the aspects of weather for at least one month. The exhibit is an awesome way for them to see what changes in weather and climate can do, and how exactly they do it. Some parts of the exhibit put a student in they eye of the storm! I had never heard of this place before but I would love to go! .

This is a great activity to make the concept of the water cycle hands-on. Students can watch the process right before their eyes over the matter of an afternoon.

Yeah, you read that right, a naked egg. What the heck? What's a naked egg, you ask. Well read on because if you have kids and if they like science at all (or doing cool things) they will love this one! First I'll tell you how to do it and then I'll explain how it ... ______ This is a neat demo that uses vinegar to strip an eggs shell. I have never seen this done before, and it caught my eye as I was searching the web. This would be great to use in a classroom when discussing chemical reactions. I would probably use only one egg and one jar to demo for the whole class to see and observe. The lesson can also lead into discussions of biology in terms of membranes and nucleus.

This lesson demonstrates a model of a species life cycle and how traits and the environment effects a species. Rather than looking at a worksheet that explains how traits are inherited or adapted due to the environment, this lesson allows students to see three generations of a species that they observe. Three different colored plastic Easter eggs and googly eyes are used for the outside appearance of the species. Two different colors of pipe cleaners are placed inside the eggs. The students make observations of color of the pipe cleaners and outer appearance. After their observation, they would write down their observation. They would take all the pipe cleaners out and throw them into a container. The next day they would come back to find what the next generation looks like.

The Students will create an undersea environment in their classroom while researching interesting facts about their favorite sea creatures. Materials may be used such as crayons, colored pencils, markers, crepe paper (blue, green, red, yellow, pink), paper plates, construction paper, index cards, or books/magazines with pictures or illustrations of fish. Throughout the following week the class will all work together to turn their classroom into an undersea environment, and teach one another more about the creatures that live in the sea. I chose this source because it is an exciting way to jump into a unit about the ocean wildlife, and by choosing their favorite creature the students will get a chance to use creativity. Ocean animals are exciting to learn about because they are often unseen to the human eye, and decorating the classroom is a fun way to bring the underground waters to life. In the classroom I would use this lesson at the beginning of a biology unit to get the class excited, and allow them to work on something fun throughout the week. Displaying their work in the classroom will make the atmosphere bright and cheery!

This is an activity in which students use slices of bread to create replicas of various landforms. After introducing the varying types of landforms to the class, the teacher will provide students with slices of bread with which they can create different land types (such as islands, peninsulas, gulfs, straits, and isthmuses) in a hands-on, memorable manner. After the students have created the landforms, they can glue them to a piece of paper, or simply eat them as a snack! This activity caught my eye because I feel as though it would be engaging for the entire class. I also thought it was cost-effective and simple to execute. This activity would be an excellent way to introduce a unit on landforms because it gives the students a chance to become acquainted with the topic in an appealing, memorable way.

A foundation in geography begins with an understanding of the terms geographers use to describe the features of Earth. Help students grow their vocabulary and learn to recognize common landforms such as islands, lakes, peninsulas, gulfs, straits, and isthmuses in a hands-on lesson using soft and squishy slices of bread! I love this because the students get to visually make the landforms when learning about them. It keeps the students involved in the lesson. I would use it when first learning about the landforms to help the students better remember them.

This is an interactive exploratory app for kids to learn about the human body. Instead of offering lectures, this app allows kids to go into different parts of the human body, explore, play and observe. It offers many different activities that teach children how each of the different parts in the body work and it explains some of the functions and processes that take place within the human body. One of the activities included is the exploration of a working model of the body, as every part is interactive: the heart beats, guts gurgle, lungs breathe, the skin feels, and eyes see. I think this would be a fun interactive online activity to do in the classroom with the students. It would be interesting to have a class discussion over how the students believe each body part functions and what they think it is used for. Then we could explore the human body through this app and find out more about it. I think creating a KWL chart would work perfectly when using this app in the classroom. Although this would be a great app to use in the classroom, it would also serve as a great resource to use at home as it is designed for kids to discover what we're made of and how we work!

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.