CBB; creative book builder, SAMR ideas
For most of us, leaves make the tree. The green foliage dresses bare, brown branches and gives trees their life. Literally. Without leaves, trees couldn’t live.
This super fun kids' science experiment uses borax to grow crystal names. All kiddos will love seeing their name shimmer and sparkle in the sunlight!
Try these FUN weather activities for kids learning how to make a weather vane and a homemade compass for hands-on spring science!
The Science Of Bread Baking - it's an edible experiment! Learn how to become a scientist in everyday lives.
This colorful rainbow in a jar is a fun science experiment for kids! Create a rainbow density tower with sugar and water.
Water Cycle Craft -- This is a unique way to display and teach your students about the water cycle. Students will create a water cycle wind sock (just add streamers) or a water cycle lantern during your next weather science lesson. There are additional labels you can add that include the terms condensation, evaporation, precipitation, and collection. You can find this new product in my teaching resources store {HERE}.
Have you ever tried to reason with a kid about why they shouldn't waste water? "Why? It just keeps coming out of the faucet!" Just telling them not to waste it is probably about as effective as our parents telling us to eat our vegetables because there were starving kids in far off places. "So what? They won't get this food whether I eat it or not!" Kids (and adults!) in developed parts of the world often take water for granted. We are lucky, unless we are experiencing a drought, to have a fairly consistent, clean water supply. This is certainly not the case everywhere. by Scott Robinson Let's look at 2 current events in the world's water situation. We've got some good news and some bad news. Then we'll explore a really effective hands-on way to educate about water conservation. This post contains affiliate links, please see disclosures for more details. So first, the bad news... Have you heard about the toxic foam that forms on Bellandur Lake in India? I hadn't until I was assigned a writing piece on it. A combination of industrial waste and raw sewage has created a dire situation in this lake in the highly populated city of Bangalore. For decades pollution has been dumped in a series of canals that ends in Bellandur Lake. The winds and rain from monsoon season just add to the problem and make the foam build up. The foam flies through the air and builds up on the roads slowing traffic much like a snowstorm. It is giving people headaches, smells awful and sticks to your skin. Last May it even caught on fire! Lack of government funds, policing and environmental regulations prevent the problem from getting any better. Sort of a foamy nightmare. The good news...An incredible young innovator has devised a plan to help clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Boyan Slat, a young Dutch entrepreneur and inventor, has an ingenious and cost effective plan in action to clean up a large portion of the bits of plastic that are floating, and breaking down, in the ocean. This plastic is slowly making its way into the food chain and causing human health issues, not to mention the devastation to aquatic wildlife as the trash floats around in the water. Slat's plan uses natural circular currents in the ocean, called gyres, to passively collect the plastic. It is corralled and collected, then recycled into oil to offset the cost of the collection. Amazing. Read more about his project, The Ocean Cleanup, here in the kid's article I wrote for DOGOnews. So, there are negative things happening to the world's water, and some positive efforts to make changes for the better. The lesson for our kids is that although Earth is covered in water, very little of it is available for us to use. That is why we need to conserve what we have. An effective hands-on way to show this is to do this demonstration at school or home. You can have students or your children help measure out the water in each step. Through the years I have come across many variations of this lesson. Here are two versions that I have adapted. One version is for those of you with access to science lab containers, like graduated cylinders, and the other version uses things you can more readily find around the house. Version 1: The World's Water Demo with Materials from the Science Lab Supplies: 1000 ml graduated cylinder 100 ml graduated cylinder 10 ml graduated cylinder petri dish (or any dish) eyedropper water 1. Fill the 1000 ml graduated cylinder with water. This represents all of the water on Earth. 2. Now pour 30 ml of this water into the 100 ml graduated cylinder. This represents Earth's fresh water. The remaining 970 ml represents the salt water in the ocean. We can't drink salt water! 4. Carefully pour about 6 ml of the "fresh" water into the petri dish. This represents the fresh water that is not frozen in ice caps or glaciers. 5. Of the water in the dish less than 1/3 represents water that is available above ground. Take an eye dropper and remove 1 drop of water from the dish. This represents the water that is clean, fresh, not polluted and otherwise available to use. Version 2: The World's Water Demo with Materials from Home Supplies: 1 gallon jug 1/2 cup measuring cup 1 Tablespoon eyedropper (or a straw to make a drop) water 1. Fill the jug with water. This represents all of the water on Earth. 2. Take 1/2 cup of this water and pour it into one of the clear cups. This represents Earth's fresh water. The rest of the water in the jug represents salt water. We can't drink salt water! 3. From the 1/2 cup of water in the clear cup, take 4 Tablespoons of water and pour this into the second clear cup. This represents the fresh water that is not frozen in ice caps or glaciers. 4. From the cup with the 4 Tablespoons of water, remove one drop with the eyedropper or straw and put it in the third clear cup. This represents the water that is clean, fresh, not polluted and otherwise available to use. Pretty mind-blowing, huh? Well there is good news here and there is bad news. The bad news is, we don't have a ton of available fresh water on Earth, so we need to understand how precious it is. The good news is we can teach our kids to conserve it! For other ways to teach water conservation and test water quality, read my post: Science Teacher's Toolbox: Testing Water Quality You might also want to check out Smarty Pants' TED-Ed video as a way to introduce water conservation! Try these books to teach about water conservation!
Here are some clever ways to use Styrofoam cups to teach math, English language arts, social studies and science! MATH[…]Continue Reading
This is a great activity to demonstrate that around 90% of an iceberg is under the surface of the water. The Titanic famously sank on the 14th April 1912
5 Minute Science Experiments for Kids on Frugal Coupon Living. Geometric Bubbles, Glow in the Dark Volcanoes, Replicate Ocean Currents and more!
Kids will be WOWED with this hands-on, fall science experiment where they will explore Why do Leaves Change Color for kids! Fun Leaf Activity!
Change starts with us! Celebrate protecting our planet with these fun Earth Day Projects! Here are some great ideas to get you started!
These sound experiments are fun and engaging! They're perfect science lessons for 1st graders and are aligned with NGSS for teaching sound.
