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This would be a great field trip to take at the end of the caterpillar/butterfly unit! This link goes directly to the field trip options for the Missouri Botanical Garden. I also noticed that there is a Teacher Professional Development link as well! This would be great for Science teachers!

This website could be useful to both the teacher and the student. For the teacher it as graphic organizers to guide the students through lesson and also has simulations to watch. The website also has games and practice quizzes for the students.

The Saint Louis Zoo provides a number of school programs, tours, and lessons for all age groups that deal with the themes of ecology, classification, conservation, and adaptation. There are even overnight programs dealing with these subjects, as well as outreach programs. Each theme has "sub-themes" that become more in depth and involved depending on the grade level of the students. (Diigo would not let me bookmark this link to the School Programs Table: http://www.stlzoo.org/files/7013/1350/2181/ProgramsandTours10.pdf). Costs vary depending on what program you wish to go on. I selected this resource because the Saint Louis Zoo is an excellent educational tool that is located so close to the area, and I feel that it should be utilized. This is valuable to me because I plan on using the Saint Louis Zoo as a field trip location and learning tool for my students. Knowing that there are scheduled programs that are challenging enough for my high school students is an excellent opportunity that I plan to use in the future. 

The Zoo Education Department offers programs designed to help students of all ages and abilities learn through experience, involvement and discovery. Programs may include live animals, biofacts, activities, demonstrations and/or discussions. If your class participates often in our programs, you may see the same animal(s) more than once. This is a great opportunity to get involved in St. Louis with the zoo. Teachers can find ways to use their classroom lessons and progress them with a field trip to the zoo.

This field trip opportunity would go great after a science lesson on renewable and nonrenewable resources/ a rain forest activity. Students would walk through the zoo focusing on different climates each animal lives in, what each animal eats, etc. The zoo provides class education programs that will meet the needs ( to their best ability) to provide animals that live in the specific area you are covering. "Programs may include live animals, bio facts, activities, demonstrations and/or discussions" (St. Louis Zoo). The zoo programs also provides four different areas of focus: adaptations, classification, conservation, and ecology.

This activity is a great way to review what animals need to survive. We will do this project at the end of our animal lesson. Students will already know what animals need in order to survive. For this activity, students will fill in their foldable with the correct needs of animals and draw a picture to go along with each need. I chose this activity because foldables are very popular in elementary grades. Having the students write the needs on a foldable instead of a regular piece of paper makes the activity more fun for them. They also love to color, so they will be excited to draw pictures! These foldables would be very cute to display in the classroom, but are also easy for students to store in their desks and refer back to them later.

It is really easy to paste these kinds of foldables into science notebooks for long-term keeping, too!

June 19, 2015 Anatomy 4D is an excellent iPad app for science teachers and students. It provides an interactive 4D experience of the human anatomy using augmented reality technology. Anatomy 4D offers an easy to use 3-dimensional learning environment ideal for classroom use. This is resource is awesome. It is another technology based resource. To use the technology the students will have to download it to a classroom iPad, but from there they are free to explore the many areas of the human body and do so in great detail. It can pinpoint a specific organ that the student wishes to learn about or that is being discussed in class and they will be able to view that organ while learning more facts; it also allows for the example to switch between male and female letting the student notice any differences or similarities. I personally navigated through this to see just what it was about and I could see so many opportunities to incorporate this application within the classroom. For example, it could be reinforcement to a teachers' lesson when discussing human anatomy and the functions of the main organs. I think it's a great tool that should be used within the class, especially since it is interactive after guided learning the student could explore on their own.

This is a game for kids to play about plants. In the game, the kids have to balance water and sun just right for the plant to grow or else it dies. This game is extremely beneficial for students to learn that plants need an equal balance of sun/water to stay allive. I would use this during the first part of my lesson.

This activity has each student growing their own plant. I was looking at the standards and I thought that this activity would work for 3-LS1-1, which says that students should develop models to describe that organisms have unique live cycles but have a common birth, reproduction, and death. I think that it would be interesting for the students to see how different plants grow from a seed and then develop unique characteristics. This activity would also teach the students responsibility, because they would be in charge of taking care of the plant. I would envision using this activity by splitting the students into groups and giving each of them a plant to care for, the students would also be in charge of keeping a weekly journal.

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!

Why are bowling lanes oiled with more oil placed at the start of the lane and less at the end? What is the advantage of throwing a "hook" ball? Students participate in activities to learn about the members of their team and how to work together in order to be successful. There are several reasons I like this idea for a field trip. For one, it's an unconventional type of science field trip. Most students wouldn't think there is a lot to consider when bowling; they just toss the ball down the lane. Before the field trip, I would spend a day or two allowing the students to formulate and hypothesize ideas for how to best knock down the pins with a bowling ball. They would have to consider things like speed, angle, bowling ball weight, where the ball should hit the pins, and whether the ball should be hooked or thrown straight. This field trip allows the students to not only question and hypothesize, but to actually test their predictions. After the field trip we could delve deeper into some of the physics concepts at play (which the webpage has links for) as well as watch a professional bowler bowl.

Creative "spin" on a science field-trip! :) Get it!?

I enjoy this lesson because it is another hands on activity for students. Students will get to compare and contrast what they know about the seasons. The students will get to place pictures in the correct poster for what season that picture may be related to. This lesson also involves reading books to the children to expand their knowledge on each of the seasons.

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.

This is a website where teachers can make online education games that go along with their lesson for free! The games are automatically created and provide interactive review for exams or quizzes. No downloads or installation required, create your school review games in the cloud and access/edit it from anywhere in the world! Use the site for unmotivated learners or to turn workbooks or flash cards into fun time. The e-learning games creates a relaxing environment which helps motivate the learner. You can even collect statistical data on who played and how they did. This was taken directly from the website because I really liked the description- I think this would be a great tool to use in the classroom.

This is a great place to find science classroom ideas. All you need to do is search for elementary science and lots of boards come up where people have "pinned" ideas for the classroom. Be prepared to spend hours on this website because it is very addicting. I would definitely use this for unique ideas in my classroom.

QR codes for each element lead to a video related to each element on the periodic table. Print out for each student to generate an interactive table for students to use with smart phones

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 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 website could be used as a personal cheat sheet for me if the students ask me a question that I dont know the answer to right there. It can also be used for the students because it has all of the basic formulas the students will need.

Seems pretty advanced for middle school.

I know this is the wikipedia article for physics but it has a lot of good information on the history and need for physics. I could use this article as a starting point for any information I wanted or needed to know and if I find something that doesn't sound right I could double check it with one of the other websites I have saved.

This resource was organized into the four different seasons. Once you decide which season you want to explore, you click on the specifc button which then leads you to many different artifacts. There were coloring sheets that went along with the season which would be a great tool for free time during this unit. Another great tool on this site was the games. Each season had games that ranged in difficulty. I could use the game section of this website as a computer center for the students. I would definitely use this website in the classroom as well as a resourse for planning my lessons.

Grade level- K-5 This is a great website that has alot of games for kids. I believe it would be good for grades K-5. It covers many topics about science including bugs, animals, ozone, and ways to go green. I think this resource would be a great resource to use in the classroom to incorporate computers. It is also a good way to get kids out of the regular classroom and lecture. Many children learn very well from the computer. This resource is also a great resource for teachers, because it has many printables and and videos that can be incorporated into the classroom.