Science+Resources+PreK-2

Post your PreK-2nd grade resources here. a) Physical Science b) Mixing colors using equations c) Using this activity as a learning station gives young students the opportunity to explore what colors can be created with using only primary colors and create equations to go along. a) Using Mathematics Asking Questions and Defining Problems b) Students are asking and answering the questions “what colors can be created by using only primary colors (blue, red, & yellow)?” and then writing equations to show which color combinations make which color. a) Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation b) Students are observing the combination of two primary colors and how it causes a color change. This activity would be appropriate for a Pre-K learning station. The website shows the activity as a whole class lesson but I think with a brief explanation students could engage in this activity in small groups. Students will first learn the three primary colors (red, blue and yellow). They will then given the opportunity to ask questions such as “what color will be created when blue and red are combined?” and investigate the answer. After testing each color combination students can write out an “equation”. It would not be appropriate for students to write out each color equation but rather a worksheet with pre-written equations could be available for the students. For example, ____ + _____ = (orange dot here). On this line students would but a red dot and then a yellow dot. By asking questions and then testing to find the answer students are observing color change to learn what color combinations make which colors. a) Life Science b) Through observation, the students will learn about the natural habitats and life cycles of various insects and animals. a) Asking Questions and Defining Problems; Analyzing and Interpreting Data b) The students will be encouraged to come up with their own questions, and use their observations to come up with possible answers to those questions. a) Patterns b) This center allows students to discover the patterns within the life cycles of different insects and animals.
 * Name:** Emily Grunwaldt
 * Title:** Color Math
 * Location:** []
 * Type of Resource:** learning center
 * Disciplinary Core Idea:**
 * Scientific and Engineering Practices:**
 * Cross Cutting Concepts:**
 * Description:**
 * Name:** Laura Ebert
 * Title:** Life Cycles Learning Center
 * Location:** http://www.ehow.com/list_7159520_activities-science-learning-center.html
 * Type of Resource:** Learning Center
 * Disciplinary Core Idea:**
 * Scientific and Engineering Practices:**
 * Cross Cutting Concepts:**
 * Description:** This learning center is appropriate for grades K-2. It contains displays of various insects and animals, such as butterflies, ladybugs, and frogs. The students will be able to look at these displays every day and watch how the insects and animals change throughout their life cycles. If I were to use this in my classroom, I would give each student a booklet of pictures of what the insects/animals look like at different stages of their lives, and once the insects/animals reach a certain stage, the students can check it off and write what they observe or what questions they have. This learning center would be a good resource to keep students engaged by giving them the opportunity to observe insects and animals and their developmental changes up close.

a) Physical science b) Physics/density c) Students are beginning to learn about density and what types of objects float and do not float. a) Asking questions and defining problems; planning and carrying out investigations; analyzing and interpreting data b) Students are observing an experiment and being asked or are asking questions about the objects that are being dropped into the water; in the end they will try to come up with an explanation as to why the objects sank or did not sink to the bottom. a) Cause and effect b) Students are trying to explain what may be causing an object to sink or float and then comparing the objects to one another.
 * Name:** Kris Kauffman
 * Title:** Will it Float?
 * Location:** []
 * Type of Resource:** Learning Center
 * Disciplinary Core Idea:**
 * Scientific and Engineering Practices:**
 * Cross Cutting Concepts:**
 * Description:** This is a great learning center for students in pre-kindergarten or kindergarten. Even though this source is good for at home, I definitely think it would be great to use in a classroom. It takes objects that students see almost daily and they get to see whether or not they will float or sink in a bucket of water. It gets them thinking about why objects float or sink. I would change it by having a couple objects at the center that the students could try. I would allow them to find other objects in the room, with my permission so that nothing valuable gets ruined, to see if they float or sink and get them wondering why it is happening.

a) Earth and Space Science b) Solar System c) Students will learn about the planets and the sun and the way our solar system works. a) Developing and using models b) Students are using balloons to represent the different planets; they are blowing them up to represent the size of the specific planet. a) Scale, proportion, and quantity; systems and system models b) Students need to understand the solar system and how it works; by creating a model of the planets and doing the activity they get a sense of how the planets orbit.
 * Name:** Kris Kauffman
 * Title:** Bringing the Solar System to life
 * Location:** []
 * Type of Resource:** Lesson plan
 * Disciplinary Core Idea:**
 * Scientific and Engineering Practices:**
 * Cross Cutting Concepts:**
 * Description: ** This lesson plan would be suitable for second or third graders; however, I think it would possibly work in the younger grades. The students create replicas of the sun and planets and show how the system works and the orbit of the system. I think that this lesson would be good to do after all of the planets have been introduced and each one has been “investigated”. Knowing where each planet is before this lesson would be better than just going in there and introducing all of these things at once. Students get to witness and be part of the “solar system” during this lesson. They get to see how important the sun and orbits are for each planet.

Name: Nicole Gottsacker Title: Explore the Solar System!! Location: [|http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/solar-system-explorer/en/#/review/solar-system-explorer/game.swf] Type of Resource: Interactive Website Disciplinary Core Idea: a) Earth and Space Science b) The Solar System c) I would use this website as an interactive activity to introduce the planets in the Solar System. Scientific and Engineering Practices: a) Obtaining, Evaluating and Communicating Information b) The website gives a brief introduction to each planet in the solar system and also shows what order they are in, great for students that know nothing about the solar system. Cross Cutting Concepts: a) Systems and System Models b) This website explains the Solar System and each planet inside of it and in the correct order. Description: This website would be perfect for early-middle elementary level students as an introduction to the Solar System. I would use this in my classroom for an engagement strategy to get my students excited about the Solar System and the planets. I would introduce the planet and then pick a student to go up to the SmartBoard and click on the planet and read the description to the class. I would then ask the students if they had any questions or unique observations about the planet. As a class, we would discuss their questions and observations. This is a great resource for a classroom because it is FREE and from a reliable source, NASA. I think students would absolutely love this, because they could go up to the board and read about the planet in front of the class. They also would enjoy sharing their observations about the planets!

Name: Nicole Gottsacker Title: Food Chains Location: [] Type of Resource: Lesson Plan Disciplinary Core Idea: a) Life Science b) Food Chains c) This lesson plan is an introduction to the concept of food chains and goes into more depth on different habitats. Scientific and Engineering Practices: a) Developing and Using Models Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information b) This lesson is all about understanding how to make a food chain/web for students that are new to the content. Cross Cutting Concepts a) Patterns Systems and System Models b) Students will understand how food chains work and will notice a pattern in how they are set up. Description: This is a great lesson for lower elementary students because it is a great introduction to Food Chains. I would definitely use this lesson in my classroom but I would make some changes. I don’t like that the lesson plan uses a pear tree habitat to introduce how to set up a food web. I don’t think that elementary students would be interested in this so I would rather use an ocean habitat to introduce it. I would also want to make the activity more kinesthetic and would assign certain animals in that habitat to students and make a food web with the students in the class. I think this would get them very engaged in the example food pyramid. This lesson is a great lesson for any teacher, because it does not have to have expensive technology to be successful.

· Applied Science · Physical Science · Earth and Space Science · The lessons and activities explore topics like the phases of the moon, magnets, electricity, and gravity all of which relate to physics. · Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. · Asking questions and defining problems. · Developing and using models. · Planning and carrying out investigations. · All of the 6 lessons supplied on the PDF include an activity that asks students to use models, carryout investigations, and ask and define problems · Patterns · Structure and Function. · Cause and Effect. · In activities related to patterns in the sky, exploring what electricity looks like, and learning with magnets, students work with the three concepts listed above.
 * Name:** Josh Jones
 * Title:** Kindergarten Physics: 2 weeks of lesson plans and activities
 * Location:** []
 * Type of Resource:** PDF
 * Disciplinary Core Idea:**
 * Scientific and Engineering Practices:**
 * Cross Cutting Concepts:**
 * Description:** This PDF offers 6 different activities/lesson plans you could use to introduce your kindergarten students to physics. The lessons could be taught over a two week period with each week being containing three lessons. They are organized pre-lab, lab, and post-lab activities and build upon each other. The lessons cover deriving information from an observation, discovering changes in the night sky, describing interactions in the physical world, exploring magnetism, discovering what objects repel or attract each other, and discovering how electricity is made. Each lesson includes the objective, vocabulary, materials needed, background information, and the procedure to carry out the activity. Each of these lessons could be taught as a stand-alone or incorporated into other units that you are teaching.

· Engineering and Technology · Engineering Design · Students sketch and develop a model of a tinfoil boat designed to float with pennies in it, make observations, and then design and build new boats to maximize the amount of pennies they can hold. · Developing and using models. · Analyzing and interpreting data. · Students develop and use tinfoil boats designed to hold pennies, record how many pennies they can hold, and then design other boats to hold more pennies. · Structure and function. · Cause and effect. · Students build different boats and examine how to better construct boats to hold more pennies. **Description:** This would be a fun learning center for you to have in your lower elementary classroom. The website includes a list of the materials you need to set up the center, instructions for how students should use it, examples of the charts students should have when working at the center, and extension questions and activities. You could use this center as a center or as an experiment done by the whole class. I would have a table set up in my room with tinfoil squares, a container of water, and pennies so students could design boats and test how many pennies they can hold before sinking. I would also have copies of the charts for students to fill out at the center so students could work on recording their findings while doing a fun activity. This center could be turned into a competition to see who could design the boat that could hold the most pennies or students could be given different sized pieces of tinfoil to use to design larger boats as well. It would be a good resource because it is a simple and fun activity that introduces students to engineering models and adjusting them based on experiments.
 * Name:** Josh Jones
 * Title:** Float My Boat Center
 * Location:** []
 * Type of Resource:** Learning Center
 * Disciplinary Core Idea:**
 * Scientific and Engineering Practices:**
 * Cross Cutting Concepts:**


 * Name:** Lynnice Chrisman


 * Title:** Puddle Science Learning Center


 * Location:** []


 * Type of Resource:** Learning Center Activity


 * Disciplinary Core Idea:**


 * 1) a. Physical Science
 * 2) b. Evaporation
 * 3) c. Students are beginning to learn about physical components of weather that they can see in their everyday lives: puddles after rain.


 * Scientific and Engineering Practices:**


 * 1) a. Asking questions; analyzing and interpreting data; obtaining, evaluating, and communicating data
 * 2) b. The students are observing an experiment essentially, recording their results, and trying to come up with an explanation for them.


 * Cross Cutting Concepts:**


 * 1) a. Cause and effect
 * 2) b. Students are observing and trying to explain the relationship between the different results they find during the experiment.


 * Description:** This interactive learning center is for second graders. The website has many different resources, but specifically a lot of learning centers for young kids. It is a good way to begin to get students into more explorative learning and to get them to begin thinking like scientists. While it is not quite inquiry based learning yet, it gets second graders on the road to inquiry based. I would use this as a good way to get students moving around, but actively thinking about what they are observing.

**Name:** Anne Connolly **Title:** Opposites Attract **Location:** [] **Type of Resource:** Learning Center **Disciplinary Core Idea:** a. Physical Science b. Magnets c. I’m creating this center to allow kids a chance to test what will be picked up by a magnet and what won’t **Scientific and Engineering Practices:** a. Planning and Carrying Out Investigations b. Analyzing and Interpreting Data b. Students would need to investigate what will and will not be picked up by magnet and analyze and interpret what they know to figure out what magnets attract and what they don’t. **Cross Cutting Concepts:** a. Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation b. Students will learn why putting a magnet in the direction of an object can either cause the object to move to the magnet or stay in one place and then they will be able to explain why it happened. **Description:** This would be great for a Kindergarten classroom. The learning center could be set up and children could go over throughout the day to try out and experiment with the magnets and see what objects they will and will not attract. I would add different things to the center like empty water bottles filled with both magnetic and non magnetic things like paper clips, paper, nails, metal shavings, cut up straws etc., and then tape the top on so nobody can open them and then as the kids drag the magnet up and down the outside of the bottle, they could see what the magnet does and does not attract.

**Name:** Anne Connolly **Title:** Edible and Non-edible Plants **Location:** http://star.spsk12.net/science/science_01.htm **Type of Resource:** Interactive activity on a website **Disciplinary Core Idea:** a. Life Science b. Plants c. I’m using it to show students that there are types of plants that are edible and some that are not. **Scientific and Engineering Practices:** a. Using Mathematics, Information and Computer Technology, and Computational Thinking b. This activity will help students become familiar with using the SmartBoard as well as make a fun, interactive activity that will get the students thinking about different plants that we eat or don’t eat. **Cross Cutting Concepts:** a. Structure and function b. This activity will talk about how plants have different functions and a function of some plants can be eaten by people and others do not serve that function. It is important to know the difference. **Description:** This would be a good activity to do with first graders. It allows the kids to get some time using the smart board in a fun way and sort the items into edible and non edible groups. It would be a good activity to use as an introduction to talking about edible and non edible plants as a way to see how much the kids know about what can and cannot be eaten. Another way to use it would be at the end of the section about edible and non edible plants as a way to sum up everything the kids have learned. After the items are sorted on each slide, you could talk about the items and how the kids knew which one was edible and which one wasn’t.

a) Earth and Space Science b) Environmental Science c) Students will explore the effects of water pollution on the environment. They will also determine if water is polluted. a) Asking Questions and Defining Problems b) Analyzing and Interpreting Data c) Planning and Carrying Out Investigations d) Students will have the chance to see what water pollution looks like, what causes it and how it affects the environment. a) Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation b) Scale, Proportion and Quantity c) Students will see what causes water pollution and what the effect on the environment is.
 * Name **: Jamie Ramos
 * Title **: Water Pollution
 * Location **: []
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Type of Resource **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">: Learning Center
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Disciplinary Core Idea **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">:
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Scientific and Engineering Practices **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">:
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Cross Cutting Concepts **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">:
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Description **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">: This learning center is intended for first grade. I think it is a good center because it demonstrates how water can get polluted, even through filters and how that will affect it. I like the lesson because it is a hands on activity that causes students to think about water pollution and ask questions. It may also lead them to look for solutions on how water pollution can be prevented or even further inquiries.

<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">a) Life Science <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">b) Animals and Habitat <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">c) Students will examine different animals that live in Wisconsin and learn things about them and their habitat. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">a) Asking Questions and Defining Problems <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">b) Analyzing and Interpreting Data <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">c) Obtaining, Evaluating and Communicating Information <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">d) Students will be given many facts about the animals of Wisconsin and they will form their own questions of things they may want to know. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">a) Structure and Function <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">b) Patterns <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">c) Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">d) Students will learn about animals that live in Wisconsin and those who became extinct due to environmental changes. They will learn what animals need to survive in the Wisconsin climate.
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Name **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">: Jamie Ramos
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Title **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">: Animals of Wisconsin
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Location **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">: []
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Type of Resource **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">: Field Trip
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Disciplinary Core Idea **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">:
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Scientific and Engineering Practices **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">:
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Cross Cutting Concepts **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">:
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">Description **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;">: I think field trips are always a great approach to learning. In this case, students get to see animals and their habitats first hand. I also like that it is connected to the state they live in and that they may actually see some of these animals in the wild. I like that the field trip includes all the information needed to learn about the animals, their habitat and what they need to survive.