Core Knowledge Foundation
Rocks & Minerals
Take young geologists on an exploration of the rock cycle with this six-lesson earth science unit on rocks and minerals. Through a series of discussions, demonstrations, and hands-on investigations your class will learn...
Curated OER
Rock Stories
Youngsters pretend they are rocks sitting on a hill. They listen to the provided guided imagery script to conceptualize the process of how rocks change over time. They draw a diagram of what happened to them as rocks during the story. An...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Baseball Rocks!
Students investigate rocks, minerals and the rock cycle before they participate in a videoconferencing activity with another class that tests their knowledge. They create PowerPoint presentation with questions about rocks and mineral...
Curated OER
How Sedimentary Rocks are Formed
Learners investigate the stripes in sedimentary rocks, using a structure at Petra, Jordan, as an example, and then do a hands-on activity using mixed nuts to illustrate the layering of sedimentary rocks.
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
Rocks and Minerals in Our Lives
Young geologists discover the important role that rocks and minerals play in our everyday lives through this series of hands-on activities. Starting off with a lesson that defines the difference between plants, animals, and...
Alabama Learning Exchange
A Rockin' Investigation
Young scientists identify the rock cycle. For this earth science activity, students participate in web-based research to understand how sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks form. As a follow-up, they collect various rocks and...
Curated OER
Nebraska Rocks & The Rock Cycle
Learners study the rock cycle and relate it to rocks that are indigenous to Nebraska. Students collect rocks and draw a diagram of the rock cycle using their collection.
Curated OER
Rock Solid
Students investigate the three types of material stress related to rocks. They watch a PowerPoint Presentation, view an online animation of the three types of rock stress, identify the various types of rocks, answer true or false...
Curated OER
Water Cycle
Ninth graders explore ways water moves through various reservoirs on Earth, examine how human activities change water cycle, investigate substances present in water that indicate human activity, and discuss how understanding water cycle...
Curated OER
The Water Cycle--Using Inspiration Software
Third graders describe and label the water cycle, and list how water changes from one form to another; students use Inspiration Software to label a blank water cycle diagram.
Curated OER
Google Earth Geology Field Trip
Students take a virtual field trip around California using Google Earth. In this geology field trip lesson, students explore landforms and a variety of rocks located in California. Students compare environments where rocks are...
Project SMART
Rocks and Minerals: Touch the Earth
Learners complete a unit of lessons on rocks and minerals. They conduct research, write e-mail questions to geologists, write daily journal entries, label maps demonstrating types of rocks/minerals found, and create a web page that...
Curated OER
How to Recycle a Rock
Third graders explore the rock cycle and explore how rocks are made, changed, destroyed and recreated. They create representations of these processes with hands-on activities.
Columbus City Schools
What is in that?
Invite your class to dig in to an engaging journey into the world of mining! Here you'll find the tools to equip young miners with knowledge of soil, rocks, and minerals, as well as types of mining operations. To round things out, the...
Curated OER
Rocks Unit
Young scholars learn about all types of rocks through a unit study consisting of 6 days. They are doing activities such as illustrating rocks, answering questions on a worksheet, reading, and reviewing questions. After the end of each...
Curated OER
Plate Tectonic Cycle
Learners explore the Earth's movements by completing worksheets. In this plate tectonics lesson, students define such natural disasters as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and mudslides and discuss their connections to plate tectonics....
Curated OER
The Water We Drink
Third graders relate that the quality of their drinking water is subject to the condition of the environment and water found in streams and creeks in their community. They track the travel of a wad of paper from a student's desk to a...
Curated OER
Earth System Science
Students explore the Earth and its ability to support life. They discuss the geosphere and the water cycle and complete the Water Wonders activity. After completing the activity, they respond in their journals and reflect upon the...
Curated OER
Food: Early American Food Cycles Web Quest
Learners complete a Web Quest on ways that Native Americans hunted for, harvested, stored, and prepared food and what types of natural foods were eaten. In this early American food cycles lesson plan, students discover many of the...
Curated OER
Ride the Wild Leaf Cycle
Fourth graders explore plant life by completing an Internet activity. In this botany lesson, 4th graders identify the types of plants that grow locally and the different soils they utilize to survive. Students read assigned text about...
Curated OER
Little Me in a Big World: Ants
Students use the life cycle of an ant to learn about their own self-esteem. In this self-esteem lesson, students read books about ants and discuss obstacles from the stories as well as the ant behavior.
Curated OER
Terrariums: A Look at the Living and Nonliving World
Third graders examine life in a terrarium and relate it to life in a larger environment. In this terrarium lesson, 3rd graders examine how living and non-living things work together by examining the changes in a terrarium. They make...
Curated OER
Earth, Sun, and Moon
Students participate in a demonstration and complete an online activity that illustrates the earth orbits the sun once a year, and that the moon takes approximately 28 days to orbit the earth.
Curated OER
Earth: The Water Planet
Students elicit data on the water cycle, ocean topography, and island formation in this six lesson unit. The ocean floor and the properties of water are examined through a variety of discussions and hands-on experiments.