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In this activity you need a flashlight, A transparent container with flat parallel sides, and 250 milliliters (1 cup) of milk. There will be water in the container. Gradually as you experiment you will add more milk to the water. The water acts as the day time sky, the milk acts as the clouds, and the flashlight is the sun. As you add more milk it gives of the appearance of a more cloudy sky. The cloudier you make it the more orange the light will get. Basically the sun sets as you fill the container with more and more milk. I think this is an awesome idea. I have never seen this done before but I would have been amassed as a student to see this. it fits great with a weather lesson, a light lesson, or a lesson about clouds and cloud types. Depending on have advanced your students are you could probably ask them to give you examples of the cloud cover that might be present as you continue to pour in the milk. This is another good observation and journal point in class. Maybe you don't tell them right away what it is supposed to look like and you have them tell you instead. You could discuss how as clouds get thicker less light passes through and introduce terms such as transparent and translucent. Whether you tell them what it is or not it is a great connection to make with students. This is something that literally happens every day in their own lives. maybe you could have them go home with journals and compare the real sunset to the one you made in class today.

This source has a collection of questions and observations students can make while visiting the Botanical Garden. A field trip to the garden is very realistic in the St. Louis area since there is one in the city. The questions could be previewed in class before the day of the trip, so the students are alert and focused on those topics. This is a great lesson to improve the field trip experience and to get students thinking about the fascinating world of plants. Going on a trip like this is great, because many students will not get a chance to see a wide variety of plant life otherwise.

The rock sandwich experiment is a hands-on way to learn about a very long process. The bread acts like two layers of sediment on top of each other that will eventually form metamorphic rock. This experiment is simple, cheap, and quick. It will make for a nice addition to a lesson on the different phases of the rock cycle. I could have pairs of students perform this experiment so everyone is involved and all of them have a chance to do a hands-on activity. It is also a great activity to do lab sheets with and a follow up journal entry on what they learned about the formation of metamorphic rock.

This resource includes the information for attending a Planetarium show at the Saint Louis Science Center. This planetarium has a show currently being shown called "The Little Star that Could." The trailer for this video can be found at the site listed. I have attended many educational shows at several different locations, but none seem to ever compare to the ones shown at the Saint Louis Science Center Planetarium. The format of the presentation really resonates with the observers and leaves a lasting impression. I would invite my class to go on a field trip to this planetarium after a lesson on the solar system.

The Live Sky Tonight show at the Saint Louis Science Center could be an incredibly fun experience for students who are studying the night sky at home! In cooperation with creating some sort of sky map at home or at school using the internet as well as visual observations, both or either, the students could compare their own work with that displayed at the planetarium! This resource would serve as particularly helpful for visual learners who may benefit from this immersive model, and it might also encourage those who had not been as engaged in star mapping before to become more involved after the experience!

I found this while I was looking for a suitable experiment that might involve snacks. This activity has students constructing a "solar oven" out of an old pizza box, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, and newspaper. The idea behind this is that students can harness the ultraviolet energy provided by the sun to make an oven that will cook food. The experiment had the students cook s'mores, but it is also possible to cook a hot dog. I selected this resource because I was looking for a fun but relevant activity that would include snacks; this way, students can learn a lesson about the sun and the energy it provides while staying engaged with the promise of a snack afterward. I would use this as part of a lesson on the sun and energy, and would probably use it closer to the end of the school year, as the weather warms up and students are looking forward to summer activities.

Join the Saint Louis Astronomical Society as the host public star parties at the Science Center on the first Friday of each Month! This resource is an excellent, not-to-mention free, field trip opportunity for students to get up close and personal with our solar system. This weather permitting event is open to the public and allows the student to visually explore the stars through telescopes while also having the opportunity to ask the St. Louis Astronomical Society any questions they may have. This field trip opportunity, if not allowed to travel as a class, is a great resource to share with parents to extend their students learning process. In addition, this website includes nightly sky updates that can be shown via a projector in class, as well as, Astronomy facts of the day.The Saint Louis Science Center would prove to be a great field trip experience during my planet or constellation lessons.

When teaching a lesson about the earth and its natural disasters the teacher can perform this activity to get younger students more involved in the lesson. Students will see the teacher mix the ingredients together in a clear container. When the material is mixed together the teacher can ask the students what they think will happen, referring to what they have been learning about. After explaining what the substance is supposed to be, quicksand, they can demonstrate that poking the substance slowly the substance is runny while poking it quickly makes the substance hard.

Remove "science" and "earth" tags and use " " around "earth science" to keep that phrase together in one tag. Same with natural disaster. Nice job on the grade level taggin!

This website contains activities for all grade levels and covers many different topics including how new medicines are found in the ocean, climate/weather, lesson sets addressing ocean littering/pollution, make your own weather station, and more. It includes basic fact sheets or interactive projects and games for students to work on. NOAA also heads up a Teach at Sea program where kindergarden through college educators can spend a given amount of time on a boat with scientists, researchers, and the boating crew to gain new experiences about human impact on the ocean, marine life, weather, etc and bring that new knowledge back to the classroom. I have also included a link to the Teach At Sea Program below. http://teacheratsea.noaa.gov/

This experiment uses rice, a plastic bottle, and a pencil to show the science behind friction. Friction is a force we all use daily but can not see it. This helps show and explain friction. This simple activity can also create an interest or desire to learn more about friction or learn why friction occurs. I chose this activity because I thought that it is a simple to use in the classroom but great way to show friction since friction can be hard to explain and you can not see it. I think this would be a great activity to start the lesson regarding motion and friction because it may spark a lot of questions.

Salt water is denser than ordinary tap water, the denser the liquid the easier it is for an object to float in it. When you lower the egg into the liquid it drops through the normal tap water until it reaches the salty water, at this point the water is dense enough for the egg to float. I think this is a neat activity that kids would enjoy, and yet it requires very few supplies and clean up. I would first group students, giving each group a glass of freshwater and an egg. They would first put the egg in the freshwater only to see it sink to the bottom. They would record what they observed and possible reasons for why it sank. I would then give them another glass that is about half full along with a salt shaker. The students would be told to mix a lot of salt into the half cup and then slowly pour some of the freshwater into it. The egg is expected to float in this solution. The students would record their observations and possible explanations. This is a good way to start a lesson about density.

Garden Classes represent our signature field trip experiences for school groups visiting the Garden! Each program begins with an introductory program in the Jordan Education Wing. Trained instructors engage students with storytelling, group-participation activities and inquiry-based hands-on experiences. All activities are standards-based and age-appropriate, and each student will pot a plant of their own to bring home! I would combine the "Heaps of Seeds" class with my garden in a glove lesson plan. Upon return to the classroom, the students could write about the differences in the growing environment at the Botanical Garden and in their Glove Garden.

This "app inventor app" designed by MIT allows students to harness the process of app making in an app itself. The MIT App Inventor provides six-week training courses, teacher supports, and educational challenges! I see coding, programming, etc. becoming a very large part of our education world very soon, and if it's not, it should be! Providing my students with the knowledge and experience they need to be technologically literate is one of the most useful tools I can send them into the future with! I envision this resource being used specifically as a lesson in the classroom, or a class project- or, alternatively this resource could be used as an additional activity for students to tackle when they are finished with their work (thus allowing them educational screen time.)

This resource contains instructions on how to bend water. The object is to bend the water by using static electricity. The materials needed are a plastic comb or inflated balloon, a narrow steam of water from a faucet, and dry hair. I selected this resource because I believe the lower elementary grades would really enjoy the experiment. Someday, I would love to teach kindergarten and I can see myself making a lesson out of this resource.

This is a fun activity that will show students the process of rain. They will take a glass of water, place shaving cream on top to represent the clouds, and drop food coloring through the "clouds" to depict rain. The lesson is also partnered with a book about clouds that describes each different type of cloud. I chose this resource because it will be something the students can get excited about while also being able to watch exactly what it looks like when rain comes out of the clouds. I would use this resource when introducing photosynthesis.

This a science experiment that involves students making a cloud in a bottle. I would use this in my classroom as a fun activity to extend a lesson over clouds and reward my students for all their hard work at the end of the week.

In this experiment, students will create their own terrarium. Creating a mini-habitat is a great way for the students to learn what it takes to make an ecosystem work. Not only do the students learn about ecosystems, they also get a sense of responsibility when it comes to keeping their ecosystem alive. I chose this resource because it was something that I did when I was in elementary school and I still remember what I learned from it to this day. I would use this experiment throughout a unit on ecosystems.

This is a fun science activity that allows students to see how erosion works, and how it affects the world around them. It also has a video to go along with the lesson so that after students see how it works, they can see a huge example of it in the Grand Canyon.

This resource provides a lesson plan that will help students build an understanding of the concepts of sound (vibration, pitch) through participation in a variety of hands-on experiments. By observing, predicting, and analyzing results, students can actively investigate the science of sound. It says the required time is two weeks but I don't think that much time is necessary to spend on this. It has many activities for students to do that are all hands on and even includes an assessment for the students. I chose this because it fits well with my standard- 1-PS4-1: plan and conduct investigations to provide evidence that vibrating materials can make a sound and that sound can make materials vibrate. I would use this resource in my future classroom by having the students break up into groups and each group would have a different activity to complete and write down their observations.

This resource is an interactive tutorial that provides a very concise overview of the school science lab environment. It familiarizes students with the basic lab safety precautions. It also helps to increase awareness of the lab environment. It covers instrumentation and equipment, rules for staying safe and concludes with a brief assessment. It also provides 'comp checks' between slides. This resource is one of the most important 'lessons' for science students prior to performing lab experiments.

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.