Science
Active Learning Projects in Science:

Make a Farm - Kids Learning Activity
K - 4th Grade
Make a Farm has a barn, silo, chicken coop, fences and other pieces to put together to make a farm. Kids plan what animals to raise and what crops are needed to feed both people and animals. A way for kids to learn about where food comes from.

2nd Grade Nutrition Lesson Plans
(We don’t know why it was labeled this--did the teacher get a grant for nutrition study?? It DOES involve oranges, though.)
Earth Science 2nd grade
Learn about Planetary Rotation, Latitudes and Seasons. Draw the continents on oranges with magic markers, put a skewer through them to show the earth’s axis, shine flashlights on them to demonstrate the way the angle of the sun causes the seasons.

GeoNet Game
3rd grade up
An interactive question and answer game played on the net. You can choose either easy or hard questions (which will challenge an adult) in any of six categories. The questions are clever and well-chosen.

Leonardo's Home Page
4th grade up
Leonardo’s Home Page describes the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci, however, the majority of the site involves looking at simple machine (as Leonardo did), and seeing how more complex machines are made from them.

Seeds of Change Garden
Grades 3 - 8
Discusses both botanic and cultural aspects of food, with emphasis on the differences between New World and Old World plants. The site contains gardening information for kids, and recipes. The recipes include some that originated in either the New World or the Old World before contact, and so contain only foods known in that area at the time.

The Heart: An Internet Exploration
Grades 3 - 8
If you have a sound card in a PC, listen to hearts beating at different rates. You can see the different stages of an unborn baby’s heart as it grows, and a picture of a beating heart.

MathMol
Grades 6 - 8
This site is a starting place for molecular modeling. Rather dry and "textbooky", but it covers some interesting material. Includes quizzes and models.

Air Travelers
4th - 8th grade
This is a basic introduction to the basic principles of buoyancy, properties of gases, temperature and the technology of hot air ballooning. Experiments and excellent graphics.

VMake Your Own Weather Station Science
Instructions on how to make your own weather station instruments from materials found around the house. Not only are they cheaper, but by making your own, you can see how they work.

Volcano World Science
You get the feeling these people really LIKE volcanoes. Several ways to make models of volcanoes, predicting eruptions, a quiz on volcanoes, all as part of a larger volcano site, including the most recent volcano eruptions. This site could also be used in conjunction with a large world map to locate volcanoes.
For a FREE program that prints world maps on a PC printer try Mega Maps

Where Is It?
Guess what place on earth NASA’s pictures from space show.

Build Your Own Mars Pathfinder Spacecraft Model Science
Download a pattern to make your own model of Mars Pathfinder

The World at Night
NASA’s Observatorium Science
Can you locate the major cities of the US and Europe? At night? From a satellite? This is a geography quiz, based on nighttime satellite pictures.

Imagine the Science
The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center has this information on red dwarfs, white dwarfs, dark matter, pulsars and much more!

Solar System Trading Cards
Great pictures on virtual cards that you collect by correctly identifying pieces of the solar system. More fun than it sounds.

How Far Is It?
Give the computer the names of two cities, and it will calculate miles, and show you both cities on a world map (your choice of projections)
For a FREE program that prints maps from one page to almost six feet across on a PC printer check out Mega Maps.

Cyber Tiger National Geographic
"Build a digital habitat for a Siberian tiger" (in a zoo)

Submarine Mountains
Using a model of underwater mountains, students make a representation of the mountains the way they would be seen by sonar.

What Came First?
A highly visual activity for understanding the sequence of evolution.

Model of Sea-Floor Spreading
Use the part entitled "A Model of Sea-Floor Spreading" about half way down the page.
Lots of fascinating material on important subjects; however, the teacher (or parent) will have to figure it out some before presenting it to the student. The first part of the lesson unfortunately uses commercial material not readily available, but the second part gives a good model of vital information.

Tracking Global Climate Change: Microfossil Record of the Planetary Heat Pump
Some excellent information and activities to illustrate how the planetary heat pump works. Unfortunately, to do any hands-on with the foraminifera you need both foraminifera and a binocular microscope, not readily available. But the first part of the site really explains the distribution of the sun’s energy on the earth and some of its effects.

Interpreting Paleoenvironments with Microfossils
The more complicated parts of this lesson are simply too technical, even for most high school students. It does, however, give some more information on how students may be able to collect foraminifera (protozoans about the size of a grain of sand) fossils

Dino-Facts A Unit on Dinosaur Behavior
Good information about dinosaur fossils, and how scientists interpret fossils to theorize about their meaning.

Correlation and Strata
Students use index fossils to trace specific strata that occur in both France and Montana. Students learn that certain creatures which became fossils existed only at specific times, and in a certain order. Only in a few of these is there a chance of finding fossils.

Findasaurus
Not really interactive, but a fun list of (real and imaginary) dinosaur names

Laser Activities
Make an artificial fog, and examine the laser beam through it. Also games to play with your cat or dog--my cat thought this was the best game ever.

Dry Ice Experiments
Sounds fun,and a little wild. Do make sure everyone has eye protection, and that no one handles the dry ice with bare hands.

Aeronautics Internet Textbook
K- 8
The principles of aeronautics and some experiments to demonstrate them.

Lady Washington
Learn how to find positions on a map, from the crew of the Lady Washington, a traditional square-rigger sailing ship.

Updated 12/02/06

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