Resources for Teaching Science

Apple Oobleck made With Apple Sauce This is a different way to approach introducing oobleck into the classroom. Students could participate in all parts of this activity. They could help make the oobleck, explore it, and, with teacher permission, possibly even taste their creation! This would also be a very cool way to explore the 5 senses with your students or just a fun activity to do during the fall. I think this could be used in kindergarten up through second grade.

This resource is a great resource to consider when covering plant and animal behaviors. It is basically a tool that a teacher could use in the classroom to help get the students to understand different behaviors, but it could also be a guide in helping a teacher bring in a plant or animal and using this tool to talk about the different behaviors of that plant or animal.

This lab requires students to analyze what they already know about Newton's Laws of Motion. The students will calculate the speed of the balloon as it soars while implementing the scientific method. This is a great resource to get the students up and moving in the classroom, and I would use this lab as a way to incorporate hands on experimentation with Newton's Laws.

InnerBody.com is a free virtual human anatomy website with detailed models of all human body systems. The Internet's best anatomy learning resource! This resource lets student interact with the human body in the different sunbject matter such as, muscular system, skeletal system, circulatory system and many more areas within the human body. This activity allows students to click on certain areas with the human body and the website increases that part of the human body in order to let the students explore and learn. I believe that this activity can help students study for their assessment as well as assist them within their memorization skills.

This interactive activity assist students in understanding the main parts of the plant cell. The students have to assist the conductor by getting the train to the right part of the plant cell, which provides memorization and practice skills for the student. This resource is valuable because it provides a lesson about the plant cell and how the plant cell parts work and what they are. I see my students using this resource as a fun way to study for their assessment, it's a wonderful memorization material.

After having a lesson on plants, this activity would be a great way for students to learn how to grow plants and also learn about the kinds of things that promote growth (warmth, sunlight, water, soil). Their activities involve learning about how seeds and plants grow and participating in a simple, in-class gardening project. I would provide plastic cups, soil, seeds, and water for each individual student and allow them to plant their own seed. This would be a great way for my students to see first hand what plants need to grow, and for them to learn how to records their observations of their plants.

After having a lesson on plants, this activity would be a great way for students to learn how to grow plants and also learn about the kinds of things that promote growth (warmth, sunlight, water, soil). Their activities involve learning about how seeds and plants grow and participating in a simple, in-class gardening project. I would provide plastic cups, soil, seeds, and water for each individual student and allow them to plant their own seed. This would be a great way for my students to see first hand what plants need to grow, and for them to learn how to records their observations of their plants.

This lesson helps the students understand and explore what technology is and how it's so much more than "computers." It will also give them the chance to study the history throughout America's past time. I think this lesson would be awesome to have a history tie-in simply because they can possibly make a timeline as a class, each student receiving an item and having to research the inventor and how it changed how people operated certain things. i.e. light bulb, electricity, cars, computers, phones, etc. They will use computers and tablets for their research. This way they're using technology to learn about technology.

I found this field trip idea from a mom who homeschool's her children and like to take them out and about to explore and learn. She was giving this as an idea for other homeschool moms, but I think that it would be awesome to do even with classroom students. The students would learn all about how science is everywhere! Especially relating to trees and how some of my kids may not realize that we get syrup from them! It may or may not just blow their minds! We would study up on it in the classroom but then we would take a field trip to go see how the sap is collected from the tree and turned into syrup. I would use this in a third, fourth, or fifth grade classroom. I would love to take a field trip to expose my students to the visuals and hands on experience. I just think this is something that is outside of the box and not a typical science lesson or trip. I think it could really help encourage some of my students who aren't fans of science. It will just be a way to spark their interest and help them have fun with science.

Photo Credit: Clipart.com To observe and document similarities and differences between parts of plants. While ideas of ecology, biology, horticulture, etc., are far too abstract for K-2 students, young children are curious about their living environment and are ready to be introduced to the idea that they live on this earth along with plants and animals. I love this lesson. Plants are something that can easily be brought into the classroom for observation and exploration. This lesson provides a way for students to explore and identify the different parts of the plant, while also being able to see the parts on an actual plant and not just from a picture. I would definitely use this type of lesson in my future classroom, even if I were teaching older children I would just alter and make the content more in depth.

This lesson gets students to not only observe and classify, but it will also help further students science skills and help them become a more detailed thinking. I like this lesson because it is hands on for young students. This lesson takes the students on a scavenger hunt to find similar parts of plants and then the teacher will bring them back together and act as a facilitator when asking them questions about what they think of their findings. They will then document their findings and how the parts of the plant may be similar or different.

© 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.

This is an awesome interactive site. This site allows the student to guide his/her own learning while navigating throughout the solar system. It allows the user to move through the solar system and choose a planet, from there it offers several more options:pictures, recent missions, news articles, and endless facts. I could see myself using this as an exploration tool for my students, or I could potentially assign them a planet where they could use this site to gather their information. I really enjoyed exploring this site myself.

This is a simple, yet, very effective way for students to understand just what is happening during moon phases. It is a very simple activity to put together that has the students sitting in a circle around the "moon" which is stationary and half is colored black. Each student, sitting at different angles draws what it is they see demonstrating the moon phases. I love this activity, it easily illustrates any misconceptions that students may have about the moon and its phases. I could see this being a very useful lesson and activity when discussing the moon, and illustrating how parts of the moon don't actually disappear. I've always thought that being able to visualize things were the best way to learn.

This activity calls for students to use their imagination when it comes to the different colors. Students are required to know how to classify object according to their color, for example: a blue toy car, a red pony, a green tree. This activity helps younger students work on their sorting skills. In my classroom I would have construction paper divided into four parts. On each part would be a color; Blue, Red Green, and Yellow. I would provide the glue and different colored objects to sort and glue, sequins, stickers, beads, pom-poms, buttons, feathers, macaroni, and foam shapes. Each student will be required to sort and glue objects by color.

This is a K-2 lesson comparing the qualities of rocks which I think is a great activity for that age group. The students are to compare different groups of rocks, noting their qualitative differences. We all probably did something similar when we were this age, and it remains a quality sensory activity for the students. The lesson is fully laid out in what is essentially a lesson plan, and it was written by a teacher. I highly recommend giving it a look.

Water, ice, steam: Three states of matter. In this animated movie, you'll learn about the tiny atoms and molecules that make up matter and how changes in temperature and pressure cause these particles to gain or lose energy, thereby changing a material's physical properties! This video provides students with a lesson on the different states of matter. It explains why the matter change to different states and what they are made up of. I believe that this can help student understand what the different states of matter are as well as provide the student with extra knowledge.

In this lesson, you are asking the students to compare the ways in which animals move: which body parts they use, how quickly, etc. The students then compare as a class and in small groups. The lesson asks you to take them outside or to bring animals into your classroom to observe them, but that is not necessarily an option, so I would alter the lesson by pulling up videos of animals for them. If multiple computers are available, one could have a different animal video going at different spots around the room for the different groups to go to. This lesson could be very fun for the students. I really think they'd enjoy actually seeing the animals move as opposed to simply talking about it.

Make these homemade shell fossils and introduce your child to the wonders of science! This activity would be a great way to end a unit on fossil imprints. This activity would allow the students to understand how fossils can be made, even if it isn't authentic. The experiment would keep the students interested and would gain their attention. I would allow my students to find objects that have great texture, and allow them to press down in the clay to see how it looks after it hardens. Once the clay hardened, I would hang them up on the wall for my students to be able to look at them.

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.

Students will conduct a series of experiments in pairs through which they will explore the processes and effects of weathering and erosion. Using the results from these explorations, they will design and conduct an experiment comparing the rate of erosion in different biomes. This activity not only allows students to learn about weathering and erosion, but also illustrates how scientists often use the results of one experiment to inspire another and/or use initial observations to inform a hypothesis. I think that students would enjoy this quality lesson.

This would be a great activity for my students if we had just finished talking about the different food groups, and what each one contains. I would have five plates per child, and have them label each plate "Dairy", "Grains", "Fruit", "Vegetable" and "Protein". I would have magazines available for each student to find pictures of food, and have them glue five under each category. This activity would allow me to see who understands how to group food under the correct category.