When fourth graders are required to learn their state history, this California teacher takes it across the curriculum implementing a project-based learning unit highlighting the Spanish Mission Era of California in the 18th and 19th...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This resource presents a primary lesson plan that looks at primary sources to learn about Chinese immigration to California.

California Pocket Mice eat seeds, insects, and sometimes green leaves. Like other pocket mice in the genus Chaetodipus, they scurry around on all four feet (unlike kangaroo rats, which are in the same family of rodents, and which hop on...

California leaf-nosed bats usually use their sense of sight (rather than echolocation) when they are foraging, and resort to echolocation only in total darkness. They fly slowly, close to the ground or to vegetation, and often take...

California sea lions are the best-known eared seals. All seals can hear, but earless seals (in the family Phocidae) have internal ears. Learn more about the Zalophus californianus, more commonly known as a California Sea Lion, in this...

Learn about Han Dynasty culture through an examination of a tomb artifact created to be buried with a rich landowner.

The kit fox has been thought by some to be a subspecies of the swift fox. This fox currently inhabits desert and semi-arid regions between the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Rocky Mountains and on down into Baja California and the North...

The largest moles in North America, weighing in at 100 - 171 grams, Townsend's Moles live only in the lowlands on the western side of the Cascade Mountains, from northwestern California to extreme southwestern British Columbia. One...

Open, rolling land and gentle slopes with shrubs are the habitat of Nelson's Antelope Squirrel, which lives only in a small region of California in and near the San Joaquin Valley. The squirrels live in relatively small colonies of six...

Northern fur seals breed on islands near Russia, Alaska, and California, but not necessarily on the island where they were born females tagged as pups have been found breeding on other islands. The seals range widely in the North...

The Mt. Lyell Shrew occurs only in the central Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and is found only at elevations above 2,000 m. Learn more about the Sorex lyelli, more commonly known as a Mt. Lyell Shrew, in this easy-to-read species...

Fog Shrews are the largest of the Pacific Coast brown shrews, and inhabit what is known as the fog belt of Oregon and California, near and along the coast. They live in redwood or dense spruce forests, in marshes, near streams, and under...

Hubbs's beaked whale is another little-known species. Beaks of squids and otoliths (inner ear particles) of some deepwater fish, some of which could have come from the stomachs of the squids, were found in the stomachs of a few stranded...

This resource covers what primary sources are, where we can find them, and how we can assess them in the classroom.