Planting a Butterfly Garden is a Gift Free to All Ages from National Geographic IMAX! The following is the 1st Free Download (see bottom of of this article). Following this are 3 others including: Grade 7-12 Learning Guide; Flight of The Butterflies (79 pp); And, also in Spanish! See Below! Objective: Students will plan and plant […]
Furthering and expanding our discussion on solubles, the in between liquid and physical state, here is another fun activity to try in the classroom. Solids and liquids are generally easy to recognize. For example, slippery and wet items are usually liquids, like water, liquid soap, even blood. Solids are usually hard and easy to hold […]
Ever had a lemon? Or anything sour? Then you have eaten an acid. Acids can be harmful like battery acid, but most acids are safe to eat like lemons, limes, and vinegar. In this activity students will explore how the properties of acids can be used to help clean objects. When acids are mixed with […]
Now that we have tackled, Liquids and Solids, we move on to the scientific properties of Gas. There are three states of matter: solids, liquids and gas. Unlike liquids and solids, gases are a challenge to “see” because the particles are so small that they are almost invisible. We can collect gas when we blow […]
In chemistry, there are two important terms, soluble and insoluble. This month, have fun making slimy creations to teach this science concept. If a substance is soluble, it means that it is easily dissolved in another solution. For example, sugar is soluble in water. However, if a substance is insoluble, it does not easily dissolve […]
Newton’s 1st law of physics states that an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion. This is an easy physics concept that can be taught to students of all ages. For example, when a bowling ball is rolled down a bowling alley, according to Newton, it […]
For our Spring Treasure Hunt this year, we looked around the schoolyard and in our backyards for budding edible flowers and this is what we found so far – some being edible and some NOT. Blue-Eyed Grass (See Photo to left), Grape Hyacinth, Crocuses, Daffodils and Narcissus. Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrhynchium bellum) is a pretty 6-petalled native […]
In this article we discuss our landscape experiment of preventing racoons from reaping the entire harvest of the plum tree, while at the same time, welcoming and sharing the flowers with the resident deer. The racoons were eating all of the plums from the tree (not sharing!) and then leaving a huge mess afterward, with […]
This month’s Elementary Science feature is about the very early example in science history of what today we call a sophisticated robot. An Automaton is basically an old-fashioned robot, or a “non-electronic moving machine “. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary describes one as: 1. a mechanism that is relatively self-operating; especially : robot 2. a machine or control […]
Answer: Azulene Have a look in your schoolyard and backyards, and see if you can find the Wild Flowers, Stones and/or Marine Life that contain Azulene (the chemical compound that would make them blue). Azulene is an organic compound, an isomer of naphthalene. Even though naphthalene itself has no color, azulene is dark blue, hence […]