Earthworm Study

Students explore worm adaptations and perform 5 lab experiments. Plus they get to create a worm hotel for the classroom!

Included (18 pages):
11 pdf presentation slides
Lab 1 Structural Adaptations: label / estimate / measure / describe attributes / review worm parts
Lab 2 Behavioral Adaptations: light / moisture / sound experimentation
Lab 3 Worm Observation: build a worm hotel instructions / observation sheet
Lab 4 Predator and Prey: draw worms in natural habitat (tunnels) / draw 3 predators / draw 2 worm food items
Lab 5 Straw Paper Work Trick: instructions for kids / kids draw their paper worm

Free Download!

Summer Design Drawing Challenge

Check out my post at We Are Teachers: 30 Day Drawing Challenge for kids (free printable)! Designs include: a kaleidoscope, tattoo art, sneakers, zoo signage and more! 

Click here for the free printable: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OkvAeYrASUpIkIpJtldtPmLBlGEV3ZSj/view?usp=sharing

7 Bohemian Inspired History Crafts

Wearable art with educational lessons tied in! Visit We Are Teachers for the rest of the post!

Plant Scavenger Hunt

Take students outside for a plant scavenger hunt! Click here to download. Students tally how many vascular and nonvascular plants they find. Then they draw an example of each. Throughout their walk, they take photos of different plants that they believe represent 7 different types of seed dispersal. They check off different types of roots they come across based on their knowledge of plants. They draw an example of a stem they investigated. Then they draw 2 different leaves and describe the leaves' properties (color, size, texture).

Supercooling Water

Matter: Can water remain a liquid below its normal freezing point 0°C (32°F), then crystallize on command (solid)?! Click here for the scientific explanation behind supercooling and snap freezing! Weather: Learn about supercooled water droplets in clouds here and how this experiment relates to freezing rain!



Turn this experiment into a delicious treat! Check out Grant Thompson's video tutorial: Self Freezing Soda!

Place Value Hopscotch

Create a place value hopscotch with sidewalk chalk! (You can include higher values or decimals as well). One player hops and the other watches and figures out the number. 

Ex: 823,005
The player hops 5 times on the 1
0 times on the 10 and 100
3 times on the 1,000
2 times on the 10, 000
8 times on the 100,000
The other player must watch closely, so he can figure out the number. Then, he writes the numeral on the pavement.

After kids take turns hopping a couple times, have them compare the numerals they made. Which number is the largest? Who created the smallest number? Can they point out the odd and even numbers they created?

Water Wheels

Integrate math (measuring), science / engineering (simple machines, force/motion, renewable energy), art (design), and history by constructing a water wheel! 

Wired - Can you construct a water wheel that can lift a small load?
Science Buddies - "Put Your Water to Work," exploring Hydropower!
Meet the Greens - Kids go green (water wheel featured bottom right)
History - water wheel / Types - get kids inspired (design) / Physics - water wheel

Playground Prepositions

Take your students out on the playground to explore prepositions!

Outdoor Math + Checkers

Practice your math skills by playing checkers! Check out Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational for a milk cap version (addition and subtraction).

Then, visit Crayola to see how to make an oversized checker board on the pavement! (featured above)

Add math equations to the blank boxes and you're ready to play! Kids move their checkers across the equations and try to solve them!

P.O.S. Musical Plates

materials: paper plates (3 for each child)
Write a noun, verb, or adjective on each paper plate. Lay the plates out in an open space outside. Play music and kids dance from plate to plate. When the music stops, the child picks up the plate and keeps it. The goal is to collect one noun, verb, and adjective plate. If the child lands on a noun when the music stops, and he already has a noun, he doesn't keep the plate. Once everyone has each part of speech, they use their creativity and imagination to create a unique sentence using the words they collected on their plates!

Biodiversity Scavenger Hunt

Kids hunt for abiotic and biotic factors in their backyard (or school yard). Then, based on their observations, they create a food chain or web to represent what they discovered in the ecosystem they explored! Click here for the printable

Capacity Relay Race

Split kids up into 2 teams. Give each team a bucket of water and a sponge. Across from each team set up different sized containers (cup, liter, gallon -also can include- pint, quart, half gallon) in a line. Kids within a team take turns racing to fill a gallon of water! 

First, they must fill up their cup by dipping the sponge into the bucket of water and squeezing the water out into the cup. Once the cup is filled, they dump it into the next item. The item won't be filled after a single cup. So, the next team member races to fill up another cup. Once the bottle is filled, they write down how many cups it took to fill the bottle. 

Then, they dump it into the next sized container. The water won't fill up the container. They have to start racing to fill up a cup again and figure out how many cups will fill up this container. 

The winner is the first team to fill up the last, largest container and have the correct answers written down (how many cups are in each container)!

Spiky Crystals

Grow crystals in your fridge with epsom salt and hot water!
Chemistry crystals (featured above) - Instructables
Cup of Quick Crystal Needles - About.com

You can also explore evaporation by growing crystals outdoors! Check out Exploratorium's Spiky Sun Crystals!

To incorporate this into a fossil unit, grow crystals on a sponge to investigate permineralization, visit Layers of Learning!

Cubes and Color

How does color affect how fast an ice cube will melt?! Investigate the heat absorbing capacity of different colors by placing ice cubes on various colors of construction paper (make sure you include black and white). Do certain colors reflect or absorb more light? Lay the paper and cubes in a super sunny spot. Then, make a prediction, create a list of what cubes you think will melt the fastest. Have kids write the color names in a column, starting with the color they think will make the ice cube melt the fastest and ending with the color they think will melt the ice cube the slowest. Create a graph of the kids' predictions. 

Green Planet suggests a twist on the experiment. Kids test colored cubes on white paper. They use food coloring to create different colors. For a white cube they add milk. To create a black cube they add cola. They place one colored cube on each piece of white paper. Which cube will melt the fastest?!

Solar Energy Balloon Blow Up!

Explore the power of the sun's heat by blowing up a balloon on a bottle! Kids paint one soda bottle white and the other black. Once dry, they attach a small balloon to the necks of their bottles. Then, they put the bottles out in the sun for a solar reaction!

Kids see that the air in the black bottle will make the balloon expand! The white bottle doesn't heat up as fast. Check out the experiment here!

Kid Meteorologist

Become a weather watcher by making your own weather instruments!

Rain Gauge - Measure rainfall - Jameson's Lab

Visit Scholastic for a printable to go along with your rain gauge!

Wind Vane - Measure wind direction - Weather Studies

Anemometer (paper cup) - Measure wind speed - Instructables

Anemometer (different design) - Science Fair Projects

Barometer - Measure atmospheric pressure - HowCast

Balloon Barometer - Sci-Experiments and Zoom (simple version)

Thermometer - Check the temp! - JumpStart

A variety of weather experiment videos - DIY: Meteorologist

Root Beer Float Science

Investigate the 3 states of matter with a tasty treat! Click here for the printable.
(Kids draw the ice cream, root beer, and foam in the mug. Then, they label: solid, liquid, or gas)

Solar Water

Investigate renewable energy, while exploring the water cycle, with this fun experiment from Agoosa! Kids magically turn salt water into fresh water with the help of solar energy!

how to:
Pour 2 cups of water into a large bowl.
Mix 3 tsp of salt into the water. Taste the water, it's super salty!
Place a small empty bowl or cup inside of the larger bowl. 
Cover with plastic wrap and place outside in the sun.
Either place a rock on top of the bowl or secure the wrap with a rubber band (to keep plastic wrap tightly secured on the bowl).
Keep the bowl outside for 1 to 3 days (until you get enough purified water into your small bowl to taste).
Compare the water in the larger bowl to the water in the smaller bowl. Do you taste the difference?!

what's happening?!
The sun's rays will heat the water, causing it to evaporate!
Salt is too heavy to evaporate; so, it stays in the larger bowl.
Condensation will occur, creating water droplets on the plastic wrap.
Gravity makes the large droplets drip into the "collection container" (your small bowl) - creating fresh water!

Speed Boat Chemical Reaction!

Create a chemical reaction to make a boat go from ZOOM! Similar to Bag Bomb, this experiment explores the three states of matter. Kids mix baking soda and vinegar to create CO2 to make their soda bottle boat zoom!

materials: 
empty soda bottle
toilet paper
baking soda
vinegar
marbles (or another object to weigh the boat down)
thumbtack or x-acto blade
a large tub of water

1. First, put marbles in the bottle and test it in water. You want the boat to be submerged.
2. Take the boat out of water. Make a hole in the bottle cap for air to seep out (using x-acto or tack). The hole should be submerged in water (when you place the bottle in the water).
Same instructions as Bag Bomb:
3. Pull off a strip of toilet paper (three sheets connected) and pour baking soda on the strip.
4. Fold and form a pocket to hold the baking soda (or roll it)
5. Add vinegar (1/4 of the soda bottle)
6. Drop the baking soda pocket in the bottle
7. Fast: Put cap on and quickly place in water!

Lemonade WAR!

Lemonade War Book Unit 

Reading / Economics: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NgjwCHVZ6I0H82dx6z5KGufgA3_5JOS-/view?usp=sharing

Celebrate the end of the school year with lemonade in a bag! Kids explore fractions and measuring, while creating a tasty treat! Recipe is from Education.com.

1 serving:

1/4 lemon, 1/2 cup water, 1 tsp sugar

add ingredients to ziploc bag and snap

mix, squish, and squeeze with hands

add an ice cube and a straw

sip!

Also, check out ice cream - it's in the bag!