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Cartoon Challenge
Pupils practice locomotor movements and space awareness while reinforcing knowledge of living and non-living things learned from the classroom.
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Three Clouds Activity
Students understand how clouds are formed. For this cloud lesson, students participate in three experiments to make clouds. Students complete activity sheets for each experiment.
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Let's Take a Rock Apart!
Learners examine a crushed rock and sort the minerals they find in that rock by color and other properties.
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Newton Rocket Car
Young scholars observe a demonstration of Newton's third law of motion using a small wooden car. They discuss Newton's third law of motion and what happens to motion if the mass or acceleration is increased, construct their car, and...
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Simple Machines: Levers
Students discover the fundamentals and daily applications of simple machines. They practice basic engineering theory through their hands-on demonstrations of levers.
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Indoor Environment: A Magazine Publication Project
Students demonstrate knowledge of Indoor Air Quality by creating a class magazine. A link to order a free Action Kit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is provided so teachers can build background knowledge. Performance...
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Soil Treasure Hunt
Students explore the concept of soil and decomposition. In this soil and decomposition lesson, students investigate bags of soil. Students then learn how animals and other organisms help in the decomposition process.
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Sound
Students identify sources and importance of sound, discuss sounds heard on way to school, explain why sound waves can be "seen", and participate in various classroom activities and experiments that illustrate how sound travels.
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Light and shadow
Students experiment with light and shadow. In this light lesson, students look at the relationship between shadows and light. They experiment with light source, shadow size, transparent objects and reflective objects.
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Water and Ice
Students examine how water changes state, from a liquid to a solid. In this water lesson students study the water cycle and how temperature and pressure effect it.
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De-composers - Terrarium
Students explore the environment by building a mock ecosystem. In this rainforest analysis lesson, students define many environmental and rainforest related vocabulary terms and discuss the current status of our planet's rainforests....
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Dinosaurs Were Real!
Learners investigate the history of dinosaurs, as real animals. In this dinosaur lesson plan, students examine basic concepts that help them understand the history of all life. Included in this article is information on the world of the...
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The Dance of the Butterfly
Students explore butterfly life cycles and movement. In this integrated fine arts and biology life cycle lesson, students listen to the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and identify the related life cycle stages. Students...
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Wonder Underground
Students classify and record objects they find "underground." For this observation lesson, students dig into bins filled with soil and encounter various objects such as bark, twigs, etc. Students classify their findings.
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Animals Up!
Learners design and build a pedestal or platform that holds a toy animal. In this building lesson, students use knowledge from a prior lesson as they build a platform or pedestal for a toy animal using on index cards. They learn the...
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Who Has Seen the Wind?
Students investigate the characteristics of wind. In this weather lesson, students use poetry and van Gogh's paintings to discuss the movement of wind. Students are introduced to the Beaufort Scale and use the tool to measure the wind...
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Shake, Rattle and Roll
Students compare the weathering of different-sized materials. Comparisons are made and data analyzed to reach conclusions about the process of weathering. Applications can be made for the higher grades.
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Three Clouds Activity
Students explore how clouds are produced through three different age-appropriate hands-on experiments.
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Simple Machines - Inclined Plane
Students learn the fundamentals and daily applications of simple machines.
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Pop Rockets
Students work together to design and build a paper rocket. They place a propellant in the contraption to make it fly. They discover Newton's third law of motion.
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Movement of Air Diorama Activity
Learners make a diorama to illustrate the process of mechanical airflow. For this movement of air lesson, students discuss ventilation and air movement indoors. Learners discuss ventilation systems and study pictures of the systems....
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Understanding the Indoor Environment: Word Walls
Students study vocabulary words about indoor air quality. In this indoor environment lesson, students create a word wall with vocabulary words about indoor air quality and pollutants.
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Strawkets and Thrust
Students investigate the effect of thrust on rocket flight. They construct two paper rockets, one with a smaller exit nozzle, and compare/contrast the distances traveled by the rockets.
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Solids, Liquids, and Gases
First graders explore the properties of matter. In this states of matter instructional activity, 1st graders conduct scientific investigations that require them to mix, cool, and heat objects in order to observe changes in the properties...