Big Idea 1: The Practice of Science

Students will identify different sound qualities that would happen in the classroom with the understanding of rules and laws in this integrated lesson plan.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will explore how the five senses help us make careful observations of rules, behaviors, and consequences to produce learning in this integrated lesson plan.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will explore how the shape of modelling clay can be changed by cutting, tearing, crumpling, smashing, or rolling. They will mold clay into the shape of a bald eagle and discuss how their clay model is a representation of a bald eagle that shows its major features. The class will discuss the bald eagle as a symbol of the United States in this integrated lesson.

Type: Lesson Plan

Who lives in the Everglades is lesson 3 of 3. Students will review some of the animals that live in the Everglades presented in lessons 1 and 2 by looking at an interactive presentation. Students will collaborate with a partner to do a sorting activity of animals that live in Florida and that do not live in Florida.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will revisit the Everglades discussing the similarities and differences between some of the animals that were presented in lesson one. They will continue to color and build their Everglades class book. Students will draw and write the similarities and differences using a Comparing Everglades Animals worksheet. Everglades Animals is lesson 2 out of 3.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students will demonstrate an understanding of characteristics of real and make-believe animals, they will sort animals according to characteristics, and they will complete a drawing of a make-believe animal home in a real-world habitat.

Type: Lesson Plan

This unit opens with a field trip to the pumpkin patch. In this project-based learning experience students will use their five senses to discover the world around them. Students will complete a KWL chart, pumpkin chart, and have group discussions. Individually students will use their five senses to describe the taste, touch, smell, look, and sound of different objects. As teams, students will create a poster to present their findings.

Type: Lesson Plan

This unit opens with a walking field trip to a local community pond. In this Project-Based Learning experience students explore their local environment and describe the different habitats for plants and animals. The class will create a KWL Chart and Word Web for habitats. Individually, students will write an informative report about a chosen animal and its habitat. As teams, students will sort and present animal/plant cards according to their given habitat/environment. Students will individually create and present a habitat using a diorama for a chosen plant/animal.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will observe the daytime sky to determine if the moon can be seen during the day. Students will record their daily observations for one week. Students will complete a Venn diagram illustrating objects seen in the daytime sky, nighttime sky, and both.

Type: Lesson Plan

The students practice making observations of a specific tree and write about it as though they are a scientist.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students learn about one of the jobs a scientist does: keeping a notebook or journal. The students will earn a procedure for completing an accurate Science Notebook entry. The teacher can follow this process throughout the year to develop students who are proficient in Science Notebooking.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will compare and contrast traits of real clown fish and Nemo, from the cartoon movie "Finding Nemo".

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a detailed lesson plan for introducing the importance of detail accuracy through nature journaling. Students will find a leaf, flower and insect to draw in their nature journals. From this lesson the students will conclude that it is important to pay attention to detail when observing and identifying objects in nature.

Type: Lesson Plan

How does our sense of smell help us process new information and develop understanding of the world around us? What body part correlates to our sense of smell? How do we use our sense of smell along with many other senses to process or recall information? Students will encounter these questions as they explore their sense of smell. This lesson will help students to identify how they use their sense of smell to help them understand the world around them.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will sort and classify rocks by observable properties, such as size, shape, color and texture. (The properties of temperature and weight are not addressed in this lesson).

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will record what they hear on a nature walk. They will learn that sounds are all around us and that they are made by vibrations.

Type: Lesson Plan

How do you know if an object is a plant or not? What are the major parts of a plant? Are plants living things? Student will encounter these questions and more as they identify and explore the different parts of a plant. This lesson will help students identify different types of plants as well as the major parts of a plant.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a short lesson to teach Earth/Space benchmarks on day and night to your K students. It also addresses some Nature of Science benchmarks.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson will guide students in understanding how models can help us understand real-world objects. Students will learn about fish features, observe real fish, and create a model of a fish.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson uses When a Storm Comes Up by Allan Fowler and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi and Ron Barrett to introduce four major weather patterns (rain showers, blizzards, tornadoes and hurricanes). The students will apply what they have learned to identify, describe, and illustrate the weather patterns using white liquid glue and oil pastels. It is recommended that this lesson be broken into two parts, with at least twelve hours in-between each lesson so the white liquid glue has time to dry.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students observe and write about the life cycle of a caterpillar. A K-W-L chart is utilized to begin discussion, as well as Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Type: Lesson Plan

This Engineering Design Challenge is intended to help students apply the concept of gravity in an engineering design challenge.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson provides students an opportunity recognizing the properties of objects and how objects move as well as working collaboratively to solve an engineering design challenge. This lesson is not the first introduction to sorting objects by their properties and observing how objects move, but a way for children to apply the concept in a more in-depth manner.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will understand how to use the scientific method to find answers to questions. Students will understand how an inventor uses a question to solve a problem. Students will investigate how to make bubbles with household items and identify different steps of the scientific method that help solve a problem.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson provides students with opportunities to investigate the habitats of local plants and animals and explore some of the ways animals depend on plants and each other.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will sort junk boxes to help them understand Physical science benchmarks. Students will also access website to reinforce sorting and technology skills.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson plan from NASA's Messenger program allows K-2 students to make a model of their home to understand models and scale.

Type: Lesson Plan

Each of Earth's different environments has its own natural features; this lesson uses multimedia resources to introduce a variety of environments to students. First, students will discuss local environmental features, then take a field trip to explore them. Next, they'll watch videos of different environment types, then compare and contrast their features. Finally, they will discuss the geologic features of interesting places they've visited.

Type: Lesson Plan

Make observations using your five senses, sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing with Tallula on her science hunt in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Discover striped newt salamanders and learn what factors make for a great scientific model in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Join Tallula as she makes observations and records them during her backyard science investigations in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

This resource offers basic information for some of the Nature of Science skills students need to learn and what they need to know about Life, Physical, and Earth and Space science in Kindergarten.

Type: Professional Development

Website explaining when and how to start environmental education for kids. There are practical suggestions for teachers to incorporate environmental education into their curriculum.

Type: Professional Development

This lesson uses centers to reinforce the five senses incorporating backyard science in the wonderful world of nature.

Type: Student Center Activity

This teaching idea describes a project completed by Kindergarten students after studying living things and the physical characteristics that make them special. Students created fish jigsaw puzzles that included written descriptions. This idea can be adapted to the study of fish in any state.

Type: Teaching Idea

This teaching idea describes a project for kindergarten students to teach them the alphabet and the shape of letters. Students use their observational skills to locate an item in nature shaped like each letter of the alphabet. Students can then compile their findings into a class or individual ABC book.

Type: Teaching Idea

This site features activity ideas on comparing plants and animals in different habitats. It also includes a virtual manipulative, black line masters for activity ideas, and a family newsletter to encourage family involvement.

Type: Teaching Idea

This inquiry activity involves students building a working model to help them understand that sound is made from vibrations.

Type: Teaching Idea

This site features lesson plans focused on weather and the sky. It includes a virtual manipulative, black line masters, and a family newsletter for parent involvement.

Type: Teaching Idea

This guided inquiry activity is designed to help students understand that people get all of their knowledge from their senses, and that is why our senses are so important.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will be able to name warm- and cold-blooded animals through role play and song and demonstrate the behaviors used to dissipate excess body heat.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students will use hand-eye coordination and large muscle skills as they reinforce positive action choices that help endangered wildlife and habitats.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will be able to describe the jobs people can do at a zoo or an aquarium.

Type: Teaching Idea

This is an activity on collecting and charting the data of weather conditions. An extension of this activity would be to create different kinds of graphs based on the data collected.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students will observe and discuss motion in learning stations or in demonstration. They will observe and discuss how a push or pull affects motion.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will be able to demonstrate how cryptic coloration helps ocean animals survive.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students will compare and contrast different kinds of birds' bills and categorize pictures. After drawing the bills in each category, they will then compare the bill types with common household items.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this classroom activity, after a general discussion about birds, students will be able to label body parts of a raptor on a worksheet.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students explore how schooling behavior is an adaptation for avoiding predators.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, students demonstrate that they know the value of numbers by writing numerals and gluing seeds on paper apples.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this guided inquiry activity, students will use 2 marbles of different size and a box to investigate what makes the marbles move and what will cause the marbles to change speed and direction.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this printable craft activity, learners create a string of cut-out moons and stars. This activity is phrased to encourage a parent and child to look at the Moon every night, and make simple illustrations of what they see, but can be adapted for various groups of learners. When learners have three or four different shapes drawn, they can cut out as many as desired and create a pattern, string them together, and hang them in a special place. Learners create simple patterns at first (A, B, A, B) and move on to more complex patterns as they mature and gain experience.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will be able to name penguin body parts and recognize that penguins hatch from eggs.

Type: Teaching Idea

Students discuss living and nonliving organisms, including plants and animals.

Type: Teaching Idea

This chart provides teachers with easy and practical items that can be used to for observational tables and observational drawing opportunities. Drawing requires the observer to focus on details such as shape, texture, line, and color. When students have time to study and then draw items in nature it increases their observational skills.

Type: Teaching Idea

Observe animal habits and habitats using one of the many webcams broadcasting from zoos and aquariums around the United States and the world in this inquiry-based activity that focuses on observation logs, class discussion, questioning, and research.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity students will compare characteristics of birds with characteristics of animals from other classifications. They will list the characteristics that are unique to birds.

Type: Teaching Idea

The lesson introduces students to the properties of water and its presence in the environment.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this activity, the students will be able to identify two differences between sea lions and seals.

Type: Teaching Idea

This unit explores the five senses and their respective related body parts. It shows how observations of the natural world are made using our senses.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

These lessons explore the characteristics and behavior of ladybugs, and to create their own paper model of a ladybug.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This unit shows students how to humanely handle pill bugs ("roly polies") and earthworms while observing their characteristics. Students will explore the types of conditions that each bug prefers to live in (eg., wet or dry, dark or light).

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

These lessons compare and contrast plants versus animals and seeds versus plants in regards to both appearance and behavior/function.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This unit introduces the terms "fast" and "slow" in regards to motion objects and explore how different objects move.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

These lessons show children how the media portrays plants and animals with characteristics that they do not truly possess in reality.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

Students explore and discuss vibration and sound using a variety of common materials. Activities demonstrate connections between vibration, movement, sound, and waves using materials such as homemade drums, rubber bands, tuning forks, balloons, and water.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

Two lessons provide students with opportunities to explore physical changes. Students manipulate paper and clay to demonstrate and discuss physical changes of matter.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

In this sequence of lessons, students have opportunities to sort various objects by multiple properties including color, size, shape, temperature, texture, and weight.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

In this unit, students record observations of the day and night sky over weeks or a month. Discussions around the observations are intended to help students recognize the patterns in their observations. Literature connections are included.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

Students explore the effects of gravity on objects and explore ways to keep objects from falling. Students then investigate parachutes to further explore gravity and factors that affect the motion that results from the gravitational force between objects and the Earth.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence