Students build a town out of boxes in this lesson. They discuss what they know about a neighborhood. They each design a home or apartment building. The class then combines their homes paying special attention to arrangement to create a...

Students study the relationship between landscape and building architecture. In this landscape architecture lesson plan, students examine the proposals for a new school building, and select the proposal they think is the best....

Students build a bridge out of an index card that support the largest amount of mass. They create their bridge using an index card and books. Students place weight on the index card. They observe what happens as more weight is added to...

Middle schoolers explain the function of DNA in the body. In this biology lesson, students build a DNA model using simple materials. They demonstrate how bases pair up in the helix.

Students engage in a lesson that uses applied mathematics to find the solution to the design of a pool for a home. They design the pool based upon scale measurements that include perimeter and area of the pool area, water volume, and...

Learners study the basic elements of the Earth's crust: rocks, soils and minerals. They categorize rocks, soils and minerals and how they are literally the foundation for our civilization. They also explore how engineers use rock soils...

Experiment with electric circuits and conductivity. Young scientists will model and discuss how an electric circuit works. First they will draw a model of the flow of electrons and then build an actual circuit. Finally, they will explain...

Explore science through problem solving and learning how to solve the problem of the story "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." Young investigators will learn how to construct a model and design a solution. They will also keep records of their...

Sift through soil and learn about why it's important for organic processes. After discussing what makes up soil, such as the living organisms and what types of soil have more nutrients, kids sample layers of mulch and deeper soil to...

By constructing a watershed model and identifying watershed features in it, they discover how water erosion changes the landscape. As with most watershed modeling activities, this one is costly in terms of time and materials. It is,...

Foster community in your classroom and encourage learners to get up and get to know each other. Individuals each receive the classmate inventory handout included and use it to fill in information about their fellow scholars. Once they...

This is not they typical set of teacher instructions. It is an organized chart of the important organic compounds. For each, the involved elements, the name of the building block monomers, the names of polymers, extra information, and a...

A fabulous lesson which combines mathematics with space science. Middle schoolers work in cooperative groups in order to research early astronauts and their accomplishments. They look at a variety of rocket and space shuttle designs, and...

Most of your learners probably think a car or college is the first big expense their parents could help them with, but as it turns out these kids have been costing their parents for their whole lives. Have they ever considered how much...

Primary readers read books in order to practice word recognition, rhyming, and play reading games. They will "read" simple books to reinforce basic reading skills in order to create a foundation. Readers are available to print out along...

Stability is key when building a bridge. Scholars explore the forces acting upon bridges through an analysis of Newton's Laws and Hooke's Law. The activity asks individuals to apply their learning by building a bridge of their own.

Students recognize that compression and tension forces are important considerations in building structures. They construct their own building structure using marshmellows and spaghetti to see which structure can hold the most weight.

Students investigate the properties and uses of rocks and minerals. They build towers using only one material from a pile of stones, tiles, wood, etc. provided by the teacher. Students test the hardness of rocks by scratching them with...

After a brief lecture on levers, torque, projectiles, and the five-step engineering design cycle, young physical science learners or engineers build catapults out of craft sticks. This is an open-ended exploration of what works and what...

Learners use materials to build, investigate, and draw two-dimensional shapes (polygons). They combine the shapes they have built and draw from the pile to begin a round-robin activity to name and determine the attributes of a selection...

Groups work together to design a lighthouse, from designing and drawing the wiring diagram, to creating prototypes of the switch and circuit, to envisioning and building a scale model along with a blueprint. By including different...

Design and build a rover ... then eat it? This activity has groups of two design and build Mars rovers. The teams determine what instruments they want to include with their rover and plan a budget. They calculate the cost of the body of...

Build a patio from toothpicks and marshmallows to analyze functions! Learners look for patterns in the data as they create different size patios. As they discover patterns, they make connections between the different representations of...

Here's a new twist in the egg drop competition. Using only six inches of tape, four straws, and 2 pieces of newspaper, teams build a structure that keeps an egg from breaking when dropped. What's different about this project is that the...