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© 2012 Clipart.com To understand how and why heat is produced from things that give off light, from machines, or when one thing is rubbed against another. This lesson is intended to give students a general idea of how heat is produced from human-based activities and mechanical and electrical machines. This is great! This is a wonderful lesson designed to help students understand how heat energy occurs. It allows several hands-on opportunities for students to explore to begin have an understanding about how heat is generated. I chose this particular resource because I never personally liked learning straight from the book, and however most topics need written clarification, I love how the students can explore and witness these on their own. I could easily see myself using this lesson within the classroom. I could assign the students to conduct exploration and then have them find new items that fell into the categories of: human activity,mechanical and electrical machines.

I found this lesson and was immediately intrigued by the different activities. For a young group of students, I would set the different activities up in a stations format and let them explore the sounds and vibrations. This lesson also asks a lot of questions that encourage students to expand on their knowledge of sound. I chose this as a resource because I love the lab stations. I would use the lab stations in a lesson, but I would not follow the lesson exactly as it is written.

In this exploratory activity, the students will play around with different producers of sound to test what they see, feel, and hear. The students should figure out that vibrations make sound. I chose this activity because it is very hands on and gives the students the opportunity to discover things on their own. I would use this activity after already introducing the simple ideas about sound.

In this activity students will roll a toy car down a ramp and measure how long the car it takes to go down the ramp. This activity emphasizes gravity, friction, and velocity. The students will measure how long their car goes down the ramp and then have the cars roll down on sandpaper. They will see how friction has an effect on objects. I like that this activity is hands on and engaging. I would use this after an introduction to gravity and friction. After the initial test, I would allow the students to change the height of the ramp to see how this affects the velocity of the cars.

This activity is a great introduction or addition to learning about the rock cycle. By using chocolate, you can show students the difference between weathered, heated, cooled, and compressed rock. The students can use bars of chocolate to create "sedimentary," "metamorphic," and "igneous" chocolate. This is a simple way to effectively show students the difference between the types of rock. The hands-on approach will aid in the students seeing firsthand what the differences look like. It aligns with NGSS focused on the rock formation and cycle, as well as, the geosphere.

How sweet is this activity? It's an introduction to the rock cycle using chocolate! Chocolate can be ground into small particles (weathered), heated, cooled, and compressed - just like rocks. Unlike rocks, chocolate can undergo these processes safely and at reasonable temperatures. Use your chocolate to create "sedimentary," "metamorphic," and "igneous" chocolate. I chose this lesson because it is a great way to get the class focused during a not so exciting topic, not to mention chocolate is my favorite thing on the entire world. I think the chocolate creations are perfect representations of the changing rock, and would allow students to understand the rock changing process easily by using visuals. I would introduce this lesson in an earth science unit as a good tool to show the three stages of rock, and to get the class hooked and ready to discuss the different phases. I would also enjoy making these three phases at home because I am sure there would be lots of left overs!

This resource contains tips and instructions on building a tissue paper hot air balloon. I included this reference because I personally participated in this activity while in high school. It was higher on the difficulty level, however, it was extremely rewarding. This activity would better serve younger elementary students as a demonstration rather than a hands on activity. However, I think 4-5th grade students could handle the task of constructing their very own hot air balloon.

This is a great experience for students to get a hands-on look into geology, speleology, topography, and even a little biology as well! At Meremac Caverns students get explore the underground caverns in an eighty-minute tour led by a trained guide and a FREE mini-workshop of the teacher's choice. i can say from experience this was one of the most fun field trips I ever went on!

Empty the entire bottle of school glue into the large mixing bowl. Add water to the empty glue bottle, tighten the lid, and shake it up. Pour the water and glue solution from the bottle into the bowl. Add some iron filings to the mixture of water and glue before stirring the entire mixture. Who wouldn't wanna play with slime?! This weblink houses a great science experiment when learning about magnets. The actually experiment is making a magnetic slime in which is attracted to magnets. It is super easy to follow and is very engaging! The experiment gives the instruction on how to prepare the slime, along with a great explanation on how it works. This resource can be very effective when teaching students about magnets, magnetic attraction, magnetic poles, etc. The experiment would work great from a junior high class! It allows for students to predict what will happen when a magnet is placed over the slime, also students could predict what other objects the slime might be attracted to. I think this resource is valuable because it would be a great way to gain the attention of the class and get them engaged.

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 activity could be used at the end of a unit on rocks, minerals and the layers of the earth. Students build their own structures made out of mini marshmallows and toothpicks. The students then place their structure on top of the jello that's sitting in an aluminum pan. The students then shake the pan to see what structures survive the "earthquake". I chose this activity because I thought it would be a great hands on experiment for students to see the damaging effects of what can happen to buildings after an earthquake. Another plus to this activity, is possibly sparking the interest of future architects.

An engineering design challenge!

This activity will help students identify what is magnetic by testing different objects. Students will work in small groups for this activity, and be provided the necessary materials. They will use magnets to test each item to determine whether or not it is magnetic. Once they have made their decision, they will record it on their worksheet. I selected this resource because it is a great hands-on activity for the students to work together on. The free downloadable printable makes it valuable to me as a teacher because I do not have to take the time to create my own worksheet. I envision this resource being used for a science center. I will provide the objects to the students in a small bucket, and have them use their coloring materials to record their data.

I like the idea of the blank worksheet, so students could gather up their own collection of items to test, or you could provide some, and then have them select others they would like to try.

This is a short audio-only clip that helps teach younger students about chemistry they can find in their own houses - specifically, the kitchen. The clip explains the various properties of water - solid, liquid, and water - and explains that all three, despite their three different forms, are all the same chemical. I chose this out of a desire to find grade-appropriate chemistry experiments for primary students, and I would use it in conjunction with video and a hands-on activity as part of a lesson on the three states of matter.

"Is your fourth grader a hands-on learner? If so, just reading about the layers of the Earth may not be enough to inspire or even interest him. Turn the abstract lesson into a practical craft with the fun and colorful creation of dough earth layers!" This lesson plan lays out the layers of the Earth through the fun artsy craft of play dough creations. Basically the child will create their own personal batch of dough-incorporating color dye and close guidance. The student will then use their play dough to collaborate on the outer crust of the earth, the water, the land the inner core and the crust. Students are capable of physically making the play dough thin or thick in accordance to the knowledge of their information. They are applying their understanding of the earth and what it's made of basically at their own fingertips.

This resource contains a lesson plan for a fifth grade class. The lesson teaches about the affects people can have on water around them. It involves a five minute video, a hands-on activity, and even a song. I selected this particular resource because it fits the standard to-obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment (5-ESS3-1). This standard will be the focus of my lesson in this course. I really liked the way the lesson plan was written to engage students. I could possibly incorporate this resource, or parts of it, into the lesson plan that I will be writing in this course.

I thought how fun and interesting it would be to have a hands-on science project for Dr. Suess' birthday. This is a website that explores different ways to approach hos books through pictures. I think that the children would love to have this project on a day that they are reading his books, and celebrating his birthday.

Fun idea, but I don't see any actual lessons, just pictures.

This website is a branch of The Butterfly House located in the Missouri Botanical Gardens. This website has an amazing list of classes/programs and their descriptions offered for grades K-6. The programs are designed to foster a greater understanding of butterflies and their importance to the balance of life on Earth. There is also information about times, fees, and dates. I think this is a great way to enhance a field trip by giving the students a fun, hands-on, and interactive experience.

The house is actually operated by the Garden but not located there.

This lab activity teaches students about convergent and divergent plate boundaries, structure of the earth, and the differences between oceanic and continental plates. Students use a fruit roll-up to present the oceanic crust, a graham cracker to represent the continental crust, and frosting to represent the asthenosphere. This hands-on activity shows students convergent and divergent plate boundaries, structure of the earth, and the differences between oceanic and continental plates. There are questions that go along with the activity to check for understanding. Then let the students eat the activity!

This website is an interactive website that looks at climate through videos, games and articles. It focuses on how climate and weather affect land, water, and animals. I chose this website because there were a lot of cool pictures and activities I thought would be fun for my students. It also has a section that helps educators build lesson plans that align with NGSS, which I think is a valuable asset. It stated that it was geared toward upper elementary, but while looking through it I felt any student, Kindergarten and up, would benefit.

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.

This is a lab activity where the students cut out the shapes of the planets and hang them from string making a solar system mobile. I chose this source because I like the hands on learning aspect it brings to the classroom.

This is a hands-on activity that allows students to grasp the idea of how far the planets are from each other and from the sun. The activity starts by having the students perform simply mathematics to convert the distance in astronomical units to centimeters. I really like that the students have to perform this task themselves and that it incorporates mathematics into the science lesson. After determining each planets distance from the sun, the students use color beads on a string to show each planets distance from the sun.

Love the science/math integration!