Tag: Science

A New Accessible PhET Simulation

PhET is a free resource that I’ve been recommending for many years. It now offers more than 100 math, physics, chemistry, and biology simulations that you can use in your classroom for free. About two years ago PhET started creating new simulation and editing existing ones to add accessibility features. Last week PhET released the […]

All About Batteries – And How to Preserve Your Laptop’s Battery Life

This week TED-Ed published a new lesson that addresses a topic that just about everyone who owns a cell phone has wondered about at one time or another. That question is “why do phone batteries get worse over time?”   Why Your Phone Battery Gets Worse Over Time explains how lithium ion batteries work, why they […]

Math, Science, History, and Search Lessons Based on Baseball

 Baseball is my favorite professional sport to watch. The Red Sox have been my favorite team for as long as I can remember which is why I still occasionally look through the baseball cards I collected as a kid. And going to last year’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony for David Ortiz was one of […]

Amusement Park Physics Lessons

We’re going to Story Land today! It’s a fairy tale themed amusement park for little kids. It’s perfect for my daughters and their cousins who are coming with us. Going to Story Land is a good reason to share some science lessons that can be taught through the context of amusement park rides like roller […]

Why Wet Dogs Are Smelly – Another Lesson Inspired by My Daughters

Spring and summer so far have been exceptionally wet here in Maine. It’s starting to make us all a little nutty. Regardless of the weather, our dogs still need to run around and go for walks. A few days ago I took our dogs for a walk in the pouring rain. When I returned my […]

How Fireworks Work

It’s Fourth of July weekend and despite what feels like never-ending rain in Maine we heard some fireworks being shot off last night. Our dogs did not appreciate it. My kids thought they were neat. That prompted my youngest to ask about fireworks work. If your kids are also curious about how fireworks work, take […]

Three Fun Science Lessons to Try This Summer

As of yesterday afternoon both of my daughters are now on summer break. We have lots of plans for doing fun things this summer. We’ll be riding bikes, going fishing, visiting Story Land, and going to a couple of science museums. There will also be days when we don’t have anything planned. On those days […]

The Science of Barbecue

A couple of evenings ago I finished watching the second season of Barbecue Showdown on Netflix. While watching it I picked up some good tips that I’ll be using when I cook foods in my smoker this summer. In fact, one of them I’ll be putting to use when I cook on Sunday. And as […]

Kindergarten and the Summer Solstice

Tomorrow is my oldest daughter’s last day of Kindergarten. We’re going to celebrate with ice cream! We might also stay up and play outside a little later tomorrow. We can do that because it won’t get dark until late in the evening as it will be the longest stretch of daylight of the year. That’s […]

Why We Have to Wear Sunscreen – Another Lesson Inspired by My Daughters

A couple of days ago I shared 22 lessons that have been inspired by my daughters’ questions. Here’s another one that popped-up yesterday, “why do we have to wear sunscreen?” It’s the question both of my daughters asked when I told them they had to wear sunscreen to play outside yesterday afternoon.  The answer of […]

Fahrenheit vs. Celsius – Another Lesson Inspired by My Daughters

On the way to school this morning my older daughter pointed out that it was 62 degrees Fahrenheit. Her younger sister responded by asking, “what’s Fahrenheit?” To that her older sister said, “it’s the temperatures we use in America.”  The conversation between my daughters prompted me to point out that our Canadian friends and most […]

Designing a Mars Rover

A couple of weeks ago I published an all about Mars post that included a video from SciShowKids titled Meet the Mars Rovers! SciShow Kids has published a follow-up to that video. The follow-up is titled How to Design a Mars Rover! How to Design a Mars Rover! explains to elementary school students how scientists […]

All About Mars

Earlier this week SciShow Kids published a new video titled Meet the Mars Rovers! The short video explains to elementary school students what a Mars rover is, what they’re used for, and some basic background information about Mars. The notes below the video on the YouTube page for it include links to lots of helpful […]

225 NASA Infographics

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory website contains a large library of infographics that you can download and print for free. The library contains infographics about spacecraft, exploration missions, planets, moons, the solar system, and comets. I downloaded the What is a Comet Made Of? infographic that you see pictured below. Applications for Education If printed in […]

The Science of Gardening

Every year we plant a small vegetable garden in our backyard. Some years it does better than others. There was a year when it seemed like we were picking seven cucumbers a day. Last year the cucumbers didn’t do well, but we had cherry tomatoes by the gallon!  Our kids like helping in the garden […]

How Sound Is Created Through Brass Instruments

Music is my oldest daughter’s favorite special class at her elementary school. The other day when I picked her up from school we talked about music class and how I played the trumpet, trombone, and tuba in school. That prompted her to ask how to play those instruments which led to my impromptu explanation of […]

48 Digital Mapping Tutorials

Even though I write a lot about Google Earth and Google Maps, there is more to digital mapping than just using those tools. In fact, there are some great digital mapping tools not made by Google that students can use to create things like historic map overlays, map and timeline combinations, and map-based stories.  In […]

Resources for Teaching and Learning About Earth Day 2023

Next Saturday is Earth Day 2023. Here’s a handful of resources to consider using if you find yourself looking for some resources to help your students understand the origins of Earth Day, its significance, or celebrating Earth Day. Discovery Education has some new resources for Earth Day 2023. These include lesson plans about sustainable living, renewable […]

Propello – A New Science Teaching and Learning Platform

Propello is a new service that offers a free and customizable science learning platform. Propello provides teachers with core science curriculum that is recommended for students in grades six through eight. But because Propello allows teachers to modify materials, the curriculum could be used with younger or older students.  When you sign-up for a free […]

Apps and Sites for Learning About Fresh Water

Earlier this week I was looking through a list of augmented reality apps that I’ve tried over the years when I was reminded of the World Wildlife Fund’s Free Rivers app. Playing with that app again prompted me to look for some similar resources. Here’s a few fun apps and sites that students can use […]

Math, Science, and Search Baseball Lessons

Today is the home opener for my beloved Boston Red Sox. Hope springs eternal for a great season. So until at least the first pitch is thrown I’ll set aside the pessimistic New Englander in me and get excited because this is the year! On that note, here are some baseball-themed lesson ideas and resources.  […]

An Interactive Simulation of Greenhouse Effect

PhET was one of the resource that I featured in this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter. Shortly after hitting send on that newsletter I learned about a new simulation that PhET now offers.  The latest PhET simulation is about the greenhouse effect. The simulation can be used to help students understand the effect of greenhouse […]

Students Can Learn About Weather Patterns and Make Forecasts in the Smithsonian Weather Lab

The Smithsonian Science Education Center’s Weather Lab is a simple online activity designed to help elementary and middle school students learn about weather patterns. In the Weather Lab students select an ocean current and an air mass then try to predict the weather pattern that will result from their choices. The Weather Lab provides an […]

Fun Games for Learning About Space

NASA Kids’ Club is a collection games, interactive activities, and images for students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. At the center of the NASA Kids’ Club is a set of games and interactive activities arranged on five skill levels. The activities range from simple things like guessing numbers in “Airplane High Low” to more difficult […]

Short Lessons and Activities for the Start of Spring

The snow in our yard is at least two feet deep right now. This was concerning to my youngest daughter who asked me on the way to school, “can we have spring if it’s still snowy?” My answer, of course, was that spring will still start even if our yard is buried in snow. That […]

All About Maple Syrup

The change to Daylight Saving Time coincides with the saving grace of the end of winter, the start maple syrup season! The days are getting a little longer and the sun is a little higher in the sky during the day. That increased daylight and warmth the sap in maple trees is starting to run. Some […]

Chem Collective Virtual Labs

Chem Collective is a project designed and maintained by Carnegie Mellon University’s chemistry department and the National Science Digital Library. On Chem Collective you will find virtual labs for chemistry experiments, simulations, visualizations, tutorials, and auto-graded problems. Students and teachers can search the site by resource type or by chemistry topic. Applications for Education Chem Collective […]

Science, Math, and Philosophy Lessons for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is just a couple of days away. If you teach primary grades, your students may be excited about exchanging little cards and candies (my daughters have been talking about it for weeks). If you teach middle school or high school students, you’re probably bracing yourself for a few days filled with extra teenage […]

How Birds Stay Warm in Winter – And How to Help Them

For the last few days it has been exceptionally cold here in Maine. Birds and squirrels keep showing up at our bird feeders despite the cold or perhaps because of the cold. While looking at the birds at our feeders yesterday my youngest daughter asked how the birds stay warm enough to not freeze their […]

Two Lessons for a Wicked Cold Day

Over the next two days here in Maine we’re expecting some of the coldest temperatures and windchills of the last 50 years. As we say in Maine, it’s going to be wicked cold! It’s going to be so cold that kids will stay inside for recess and we’ll leave the water dripping in our faucets […]

eSkeletons – Digital Comparisons of Mammal Skeletons

eSkeletons is a great website produced by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. eSkeletons features interactive models of mammal skeletons. Select a model from the menu on the home page then click on any bone in the model to view it in detail. After select a bone to view you […]

A Virtual Owl Pellet Dissection Activity

For the last couple of weeks my oldest daughter has been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to dissect owl pellets at school. She was supposed to do that today. But we have a snow day today. None-the-less, her excitement this week has reminded me of a couple of helpful owl-themed resources from my archive.  An old SciShow […]

How to Create Map Overlays

Felt was one of my favorite new tools in 2022. In fact, I liked it so much that I included it in my Best of the Web for 2022. Felt is a free multimedia mapping tool that I think is easier for first-time users to use than Google’s My Maps or ESRI’s mapping tools. Right […]

Best of 2022 – Periodic Table of Videos

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. For years I […]

Best of 2022 – The Science of Winter Olympic Sports

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. The 2022 Winter […]

Short Lessons on How Snow is Made

My oldest daughter is super excited to start her third year of ski lessons this winter. I’m also very excited about it because I’m going to be giving ski lessons at our local ski mountain. While we’ve had some snowstorms this winter, we wouldn’t have nearly as much area to ski on if it weren’t […]

How a Generator Works – And Other Short Lessons About Generating Electricity

Last weekend we had a huge snowstorm that knocked out the electrical power in my whole neighborhood and in about half of our town. In my neighborhood we were without electricity from Friday night through Monday afternoon. Fortunately, we have a portable generator that provides electricity for the essentials in our house and we have […]

“Dad, It’s Still Autumn” – Corrections from My Daughters

Those of you who have been following my blog with regularity over the last couple of years have probably seen my informal series of posts titled Questions from My Daughters. Those posts have been about answering the questions that my daughters (now ages five and six) ask me. Questions like “what do worms eat?” and […]

Interactive Math & Science Simulations for Online and Offline Use

PhET is one of my favorite resources for math and science teachers. In fact, it’s included as one of my Best of the Web picks for 2022. One of the many things that I like about PhET math and science simulations is that you can use them with or without an internet connection. That’s something […]

How Airplanes Fly – And Other Good Resources for Learning About Flying

I’m currently reading Bill Bryson’s book, One Summer: America, 1927. The book is centered around significant events of that summer including Charles Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic. Airplanes have come a long way since Lindbergh flew in the Spirit of St. Louis, an airplane that he couldn’t see out of when looking forward. The physics […]

A Mean PhET Simulation

PhET is one of my go-to resources for math and science teachers. Just before the Thanksgiving break (for those of us in the United States) PhET released a new simulation designed to help students understand the concept of mean.  Mean: Share and Balance is an interactive simulation in which students are shown a series of […]

In Memory of Ed Webster – Resources for Teaching and Learning About Mount Everest

This morning I opened Facebook and saw the news that fellow Mainer, mountaineer, and author Ed Webster had passed away on Thanksgiving morning. He’s probably most famous for pioneering a new route up Mount Everest in 1988 which he chronicled with words and fascinating imagery in Snow in the Kingdom.  I met Ed a few […]

Maps and Videos About Where Thanksgiving Foods Come From

Where Does Your Thanksgiving Dinner Come From? is an interactive storymap that I’ve shared in the past and still find interesting. The map displays where eight popular Thanksgiving foods are grown and harvested in the United States. The storymap includes a map for each ingredient. Each map shows the locations of commercial producers. Fun facts are […]

The Science Behind My Favorite Thanksgiving Foods

American Thanksgiving is one week away. The traditional Thanksgiving meal is one of my favorite combinations of foods. My mouth is watering just thinking about turkey, potatoes, squash, stuffing and cranberry sauce from a can (I love the “shlop” sound the cranberry sauce makes as it pops out of the can).  This year I’m in charge of […]

The Differences Between Crows and Ravens

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven gets read a lot in schools at this time of year. Why you should read Poe’s work is explained in one of the Halloween-themed TED-Ed lessons that I shared a few days ago. What’s not explained in those lessons is the difference between a raven and a crow. To answer […]

Why Does the Road Crack? – Another Question from my Daughters

One of my favorite things to do these days is to ride bikes with my daughters. Sometimes I even record those rides on Strava because my older daughter now wants to keep track of how fast she can go down a little section of road in our neighborhood (current record 10.5mph). When we were riding […]

You Should Write About Rainbows!

Today is my youngest daughter’s 5th birthday! When I told her that I needed to do some writing this morning she said, “you should write about rainbows!” So that’s what this post is all about (for the record, the writing that I had planned to do this morning was about some cool resources for Geography […]

Why Our Voices Sounds Different to Us Than to Others

One of the questions that I often get asked after giving a keynote is “has anyone told you that you sound like Ray Romano?” I never thought that I did until people started asking me that. A dozen years later I’ve come to accept that I do sound like him. On a similar note,  “do […]

Tutorials for Getting Started With the Smithsonian Learning Lab

The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create and search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans from a wide range of Smithsonian-hosted resources. It also lets you create collections to share with others as well as create assignments to give to your students. To start the new school year The Smithsonian published a collection […]

A Database of Solutions to Common Stains

Stain Solutions is a handy website developed by Susan Taylor at the University of Illinois Extension. The site is a database of dozens of common stains and the solutions to remove them. Click on a stain in the chart and you will be taken to a list of the ingredients needed to make a solution […]

Expedition Insects – An Interactive Book from the Smithsonian

Expedition Insects is a neat interactive book from the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The book was written to helps students in third through fifth grade learn about insects from all over the world. The book is full of pictures and videos to complement the text. Throughout the book students can click or tap on underlined […]

Lessons to Answer Common Questions About Fall

Yesterday morning my youngest daughter and I were walking one of our dogs when she asked a question that her older sister asked a couple of years ago. That question was, “why do we have fall?” I did my best to explain it to her (she’s four, five next month) in terms that she could […]

Moose Tracks and a Lesson on Eyes vs. Cameras

A couple of days ago I was walking down a trail to one of my favorite fishing spots in all of Maine. Along the trail I saw a bunch of moose tracks. I did my best to get a good picture of them. Unfortunately, like all pictures of moose tracks that I’ve taken over the […]

225 NASA Infographics

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory website contains a large library of infographics that you can download and print for free. The library contains infographics about spacecraft, exploration missions, planets, moons, the solar system, and comets. I downloaded the What is Comet Made Of? infographic that you see pictured below. Applications for Education If printed in color, […]

2022 Fall Foliage Prediction Map – And Why Leaves Change Color in the Fall

The 2022 Fall Foliage Prediction Map is a feature of the SmokyMountains.com website. The map displays a week-by-week prediction of when leaves in the continental United States will be changing colors from now through the end of November. You can see the predictions change by moving the timeline at the bottom of the map. On the same […]

Science Lesson – The Threat of Invasive Species

When you drive into my home state of Maine two of the first signs you’ll notice are a sign to watch for moose and a sign banning the importation of firewood. The reason for the moose crossing sign is fairly self-explanatory. The reason for the ban on importing firewood may not be so obvious. Importing […]

Fun With Soda Pop – A Nice Weekend Science Experiment

SciShow Kids recently published an updated video about a “classic” science experiment. That experiment is dropping Mentos candies into a bottle of soda pop. But before doing that and explaining what happens, the video briefly explains how beverages are carbonated and why the bubbles stick to some objects better than others. If you’re looking for […]

Why Do We Get Dizzy? – Another Question from My Daughters

We’re going to Storyland today for the sixth or seventh time this summer (it’s one of our favorite family activities). My daughters love to go on a ride called the Turtle Twirl. I don’t love it because it makes me quite dizzy and feel a bit of nausea. I’ve seen many other parents gingerly walk […]

NOAA Sea to Sky – 1000+ Resources for Science Teachers

Earlier this week I was checking my local weather forecast on NOAA.gov when I noticed a back-to-school announcement. The announcement highlighted some lesson plans and multimedia resources for teaching about things like hurricanes, changing sea levels, and climate resilience. The announcement also drew attention to an updated database of resources for teachers. That database is […]

Short Lessons on Centripetal Force and Tea Cups

Last week I took my older daughter to Storyland to ride the roller coaster as many times as she wanted to. Today, I’m taking my younger daughter for a daddy-daughter day at Storyland. Her favorite rides are the Flying Dutch Shoes, Alice’s Tea Cups, and the Cuckoo Clockenspiel. In other words, she likes to spin […]

Five Good Resources for Learning About Airplanes and Airlines

We’re planning a little trip this fall to visit some family that we haven’t seen since before the start of the pandemic. When we told our daughters that we’re going to fly they got very excited about it. We’ve now been answering questions about flying seemingly nonstop for a few days. Those conversations prompted me […]

Roller Coaster Physics

Tomorrow I’m taking my oldest daughter to Storyland for a daddy-daughter hangout day before she starts Kindergarten in a few weeks. Her favorite ride is the Polar Coaster which is a roller coaster that is perfect for kids her age (and for 40-something dads who can’t really handle big roller coasters anymore).  Thinking about the Polar […]

Why Do Birds Sing?

My daughters have recently become obsessed with Elinor Wonders Why on PBS Kids. The theme song for the show includes the line, “Elinor wonders why, why do birds sing and how do they fly?” That line has been stuck in my head and playing on repeat for the last few days. So in a quest […]

Timelapse and Virtual Field Trip – The Great Salt Lake

This morning my attention was grabbed by a BBC video titled Utah’s Great Salt Lake is Running Out of Water. It’s a fascinating video about the conditions that have contributed to the Great Salt Lake shrinking by nearly two-thirds in this century. Spoiler alert: drought isn’t the biggest contributor to the shrinkage.  Watching the BBC’s […]

PhET Virtual Workshops for Teachers

PhET is one of my top resource recommendations for math and science teachers. PhET offers more than one hundred online, interactive simulations for teaching concepts in mathematics, physics, chemistry, earth science, and biology. Those simulations can be used on PhET’s website and they can be embedded into your website for your students to use.  If […]

A Short Lesson About Concussions

Yesterday morning I had the Tour de France playing in the background while working in my office. I looked up from my laptop when I heard the commentators mention Greg LeMond followed by highlights of the 1986 stage to Alpe d’Huez. One of the things that struck me from those highlights was the lack of […]

DIY Maps of Bird Migration Patterns

Over the last handful of years I’ve become more and more fascinated with birds. I think that’s due in part to my daughters’ enjoyment of watching the many interesting birds that come to the feeders around our house. We’ve even taken to naming some of the birds that visit the feeders. For example, Hans is […]

How Do Fireworks Work? – Another Question from my Daughters

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July and that means there will be fireworks displays in towns all over the United States. My little town is having small display that we’ll actually be able to see from our backyard. And this year my kids are old enough to stay up to see the fireworks display. Of […]

A Whole Bunch of Resources for Learning About the Tour de France

The Tour de France begins tomorrow. Watching the race every morning for three weeks is one of the things I look forward to every summer. I also find that it provides some neat opportunities for science, health, and physical education lessons. Here are some of my go-to resources for teaching and learning about the Tour […]

Climate Kids Helps Kids Learn About Climate Change

NASA’s Climate Kids website has many excellent online and offline resources for teaching students about climate change. One of those resources is the Big Questions page. The Big Questions page guides students through the basic concepts and issues related to climate change. Six big questions are featured on the page. Students select a question to discover the answers […]

Ten Good Templates for Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts Activities

At the start of this year ReadWriteThink re-released all of their popular interactive templates for creating all kinds of things including poems, story plots, timelines, compare & contrast maps, and much more. If you haven’t looked at ReadWriteThink in a while, take a look at these updated templates that can be used for lessons in […]

Short Lessons About the Longest Day of the Year

Perhaps my favorite thing about living in northern New England is the amount of daylight we have in the summer. I enjoy the early sunrises even more than I do that late sunsets (before I had kids it was the other way around). The longest day of the year is coming up and if your […]

Unpoppable Bubbles – Another Fun Summer Science Lesson

Last week I shared a handful of resources for building solar ovens. The week before that I shared some at-home summer science lesson resources from Discovery and 3M. Today, I have another summer science lesson resource to share with you.  Earlier this week SciShow Kids published a new video titled Unpoppable Bubbles. In the video […]

A Giraffe in Our House – More Fun With Augmented Reality

Tomorrow we’re going to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. My daughters have been looking forward to it for weeks! The giraffes are what they are most excited to see. This morning my youngest daughter asked to see pictures of giraffes. What she really meant was that she wanted to see augmented reality giraffes in […]

Science Fun in the Sun – Free Science Lesson Plan

As I write this it’s a cloudy and relatively cold June day here in Maine. The sunshine will return and with it there will be some opportunities for fun outdoor learning activities. One such activity is building a solar oven and trying to cook something like s’mores in it. 4H offers free instructions on how […]

A TED-Ed Lesson for Every Element on the Periodic Table

For years I have referred readers to the University of Nottingham’s Periodic Table of Videos. That table provides a video about every element that is in the Periodic Table. A few years ago the producers of the Periodic Table of Videos partnered with TED-Ed to create lessons about every element in the Periodic Table. TED-Ed’s Periodic Videos […]

What Makes Us Itch? – A Science Lesson

Last weekend we had our first really nice summer-like day of the year. There was lots of sunshine, it was warm, and there was little wind. That little wind is a curse and a blessing in Maine at this time of year. It’s nice because it makes for easier bike riding. It’s bad because it’s […]

Five Fun Science Games for Kids

I’m taking my daughters to a science museum today. Thinking about the museum and the interactive displays that they have got me thinking about some of the science games that I’ve reviewed over the years. I went into my archives and pulled out five fun science games for elementary school students.  Peep and the Big […]

Lessons for World Bicycle Day

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you probably know that I love to go for long bike rides. That’s why I’m excited that today is World Bicycle Day! To celebrate World Bicycle Day I have some bicycle-related lessons to share with you.  Planning Safe Biking RoutesYou don’t have to go far to […]

Fun Science Lessons for Students and Parents to do This Summer

Today is the first day of June and even though it was only 44F when I woke up this morning, summer is on my mind. I’m sure it’s on the minds of many of you, your students, and their parents as well. If you have students whose parents are asking for some things they can […]

What is Lightning? – Another Question from My Daughter

On Saturday we had the first thunderstorm of the summer at our house. I made it back from a bike ride just as the thunder and lightning started to crack overhead. The storm prompted my five-year-old to ask, “what is lightning?” We tried to give my daughter a short explanation that lighting is electricity traveling […]

Five Concepts You Can Teach Through Geocaching

Geocaching is one of the things that I spend a good bit of time talking about in both my workshop and in my webinar about blending technology into outdoor learning. Geocaching is a great activity to do to get kids outside for hands-on learning experiences. Here are five things that you can teach through geocaching […]

Five Google Earth Activities to Get Kids Interested in the Outdoors

In last week’s Week in Review I mentioned a new book titled Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. In the book Steven Rinella presents a lot of ideas for getting kids interested and involved in learning about nature. In the first chapter he presents a big list of ideas for things that you can do […]

A Cool Lesson for a Hot Spring Day – How the Popsicle Was Invented

It was 86F here in Maine yesterday. In the afternoon my kids had popsicles outside for the first time in 2022! That prompted my five-year-old to ask, “why are they called popsicles?” I didn’t have a good answer despite the fact that I did recall watching a TED-Ed lesson about popsicles a few years ago. […]

Science Friday is a Must-bookmark for Science Teachers

Science Friday is a must-bookmark for teachers and students of science. As the name implies, every Friday a new batch of podcast segments about a wide range of science topics is released. Additionally, on Science Friday you will find interesting videos and articles about a wide array of topics in chemistry, biology, physics, space science, and […]

Electric Lessons – Energy 101

The ski mountain that is about ten miles down the road from where I live has a large array of solar panels. Their goal is to use as much renewable energy as possible. To that end, another solar array is being constructed about a mile down the road. I noticed the progress earlier this week […]

A Handful of Resources for Teaching and Learning About Earth Day

This Friday is Earth Day. Here’s a handful of resources to consider using if you find yourself looking for some resources to help your students understand the origins of Earth Day, its significance, or celebrating Earth Day. CBC Kids News offers a good, concise overview of Earth Day. What I like about CBC Kids News […]

We’ve Got Worms! And More Questions from My Daughters

Earlier this week we had some relatively warm days and were able to do a little spring yard work. My daughters like to try to help with some of it. But like most four and five year old kids, they quickly get distracted. Such was the case when they discovered some worms under some leaves […]

The Mystery Pollinator!

This morning my local television news station broadcast a segment about hummingbirds and when to put out hummingbird feeders. We always put out a few hummingbird feeders every summer so I watched the segment with slightly more interest than some of the other filler stories they show every morning. One little aspect of the story […]

Create Your Own USGS Maps

Earlier this year I highlighted the galleries of free to use and re-use media that the USGS hosts. Earlier this week I was back on the USGS site looking in those galleries when I noticed something new to me. That something is the USGS National Map Viewer.  Don’t the name fool you, the USGS National […]

Maple Syrup Sunday! And Maple Syrup Sundaes

Today is Maple Syrup Sunday here in Maine. It’s a day when many maple syrup producers open their operations to visitors. All of them offer some type of educational program about the production of maple syrup. Many of them will have samples of their products. My favorite one has maple syrup ice cream sundaes!  A […]

Spring is Here! Kind of…for Some of Us

Today is the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. And even there is still plenty of winter-like days to come, here in Maine we’re starting to have longer days, see and hear more birds around our house, and there’s plenty of mud being tracked into the house by my kids and dogs. Those […]

A Lesson About Gas

Whenever I fill up my car’s gas tank I’m thankful that I don’t have a car that requires high octane gasoline. What is high octane gasoline anyway? Is is really significantly better than regular unleaded gasoline? And why is gasoline “unleaded?” Those questions and more are answered in this relatively new Reactions video.  Applications for […]

It’s Maple Syrup Season!

The saving grace of the change to Daylight Saving Time is that it coincides with one of my favorite things about spring, maple syrup season! That means days are getting a little longer and the sun is a little higher in the sky during the day. As a result of that increased daylight and warmth […]

NASA From Hidden to Modern Figures

NASA’s From Hidden to Modern Figures is an excellent resource for teaching about the women who made significant contributions to the development of NASA’s space program. The site features written and video biographies of Katherine Johnson, Mary W. Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan who were instrumental in many of NASA’s missions including the first orbit of […]

PhET Releases Ten Updated Simulations With Interactive Descriptions

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have already seen this news but it’s worth sharing here as well. PhET now has ten simulations that include interactive descriptions. This makes the simulations accessible to students who rely on screen readers to access the web.  Read PhET’s announcement here.  We are excited to formally announce […]

Take Flight With This Library of Congress Image Collection

The Library of Congress is a great place to find historical pictures, drawings, and maps to use in lesson plans and classroom projects. Finding things on the Library of Congress’ website isn’t always easy if you only use the search function. But the LOC’s Free to Use and Reuse Sets make it much easier to find […]

Math, Science, and Philosophy Lessons for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is next Monday. My daughters’ preschool is having a little celebration during which little cards will be exchanged. They are very excited about it! I used Canva to make some cards for them to write their names and their classmates’ names on. If you’re looking to incorporate Valentine’s Day into some lessons this […]

CanvasMol – Online 3D Models of Molecules

Canvas Mol is a website that provides 3D, interactive, rotating models of simple and complex molecules. There are more than fifty models of relatively common molecules like glucose, fructose, and morphine. Each model can be altered to show or not show bonds, to show or not show individual atoms, and to rotate on the X,Y, or […]

Yellowstone Distance Learning Opportunities

A couple of weeks ago I shared some information about Denali’s Distance Learning Program for K-12 classrooms. This week I learned that Yellowstone National Park offers a similar program.  Yellowstone National Park’s distance learning program lets you schedule a twenty to forty minute virtual presentation with a Yellowstone Park ranger. Presentations can be scheduled for […]

Groundhog Day Explained

On Friday my youngest daughter came home from preschool and informed me that Wednesday is Groundhog Day and tell me all about it. It’s the day, according to legend, that a groundhog will predict how much longer winter will last in the northern hemisphere. Your students might be wondering where this tradition originated. The following […]

The USGS Multimedia Gallery Offers Excellent Public Domain Images and Videos

The USGS Multimedia Gallery contains large collections of educational videos, animations, audio recordings, pictures, and slideshows. As you might expect, you’ll also find lots of maps in the USGS multimedia gallery. You can browse and search the gallery according to media type, year of publication, and keyword.  In addition to the videos in the USGS Multimedia Gallery you can […]

Making Snowflakes and Sundials

Last week I shared a couple of good places to find ideas and plans for at-home, hands-on science lessons. Here’s a couple more ideas to try courtesy of SciShow Kids.  In this SciShow Kids video students learn how a sundial works and how they can make their own sundials. The video could be the basis for […]

Top Tools and Activities for Collaborative Learning in 2022

This blog post was sponsored by Lumio, but it features a bunch of other great tools as well.  At this point in the school year and our second school year in a pandemic, we’ve all become familiar with the nuts and bolts of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or whatever other platform your school uses […]

A Couple of Good Places to Find Science Activities for School or Home

While standing around watching my daughters’ ski lesson on Sunday I ended up chatting with another parent. The conversation inevitably turned to “what do you do?” When she found out what I do she excited, and with a tinge of relief, asked if I had any suggestions for science activities she can do at home […]

Questions From My Daughters – What Are Freckles?

Last night one of my daughters asked, “what are freckles?” I did my best to explain that freckles are spots of melanin in our skin. Of course, I then had to try to explain to my five-year-old what melanin is. She then asked why she has freckles and one of her classmates doesn’t. That was […]

Good Resources for Remote Math & Science Lessons

PhET is a great resource that I’ve shared a bunch of times over the years. Recently, I was looking through the site when I noticed that its activity search tool now includes a filter for remote activities. Through this search tool you can locate lesson plans designed for remote instruction and learning. You can combine […]

Anesthesia and Tonsils

One of my daughters had a tonsillectomy this week. Prior to the surgery we talked with her about what was going to happen that day and why she was going to get so much ice cream afterwards. She’s too young to really understand the science of how anesthesia works, but she did understand the idea […]

Wind Chill and Our Perception of Cold

As I mentioned earlier this week, we’ve had a couple of exceptionally cold days here in Maine this week. One town near me recorded a wind chill of -36F on Tuesday. This weekend is supposed to be just as cold.  I’ve gone ice fishing in similar conditions without moaning about it (at least that’s how […]

Understanding Negative Temperatures

It is a very cold day here in Maine. It’s not the coldest that I’ve experienced in Maine, but it’s still not a pleasant day outside. When I let my dogs out at 5am it was -9F and when I took my daughters to school it was -1F. It was on the way to school […]

What’s the Difference Between Snow, Sleet, and Freezing Rain?

Yesterday it started to sleet during my daughters’ skiing lessons. They didn’t mind and kept right on skiing. But I heard a lot of other parents saying things like, “what the heck? why isn’t this snow? it’s cold enough to be snow!” As an amateur meteorologist I knew the answer was that while the temperature […]

The Science of Winter Olympics Sports

The 2022 Winter Olympics are scheduled to start in a little less than one month from now. I’m looking forward to sitting on my couch and drinking some hot chocolate while watching the world’s best in alpine and nordic skiing. I also enjoy watching curling even though I don’t always understand all of the rules […]

All About American Buffalo

I read Steven Rinella’s American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon last week. It’s a fascinating book about the history of humans’ relationship with American buffalo (bison) in North America. The telling of the history is intermixed with Rinella’s own stories of finding a buffalo skull in Montana, visiting historic buffalo jumps, and hunting […]

The Science of Fireworks

Today is New Year’s Eve and while there aren’t any fireworks displays planned for my little town, the nearby ski resort will have a little display. Fortunately, the display is planned early in the evening so my kids and I can see it without staying up past our bedtime.  This is the first year that […]

Best of 2021 – The Science of Cake!

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from October.  If you ask my five-year-old what she wants to be when she grows up she’ll say, “a cake maker!” She’s been […]

21 Activities and Lessons That Have a Winter Theme

Today is the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere. To mark the start of winter I’ve put together a list of twenty-one activities and lessons that have a winter theme.  Snowy Outdoor ActivitiesI enjoy winter and my kids do too. We like to sled, ski, snowshoe, and just play outside in the snow. […]

A Platypus in My House! Fun and Learning Through Augmented Reality

My four-year-old loves Gus the Platypus in the Pete the Cat series. A couple of weeks ago that led to her asking questions like “can we get a platypus?” and “what’s a platypus sound like?” My answers were “no” and “I don’t know.” I did, however, put an augmented reality platypus in our house.  Through […]

We’re Counting Birds! – A Lesson in Citizen Science and Canva Template Creation

Here in Maine the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is conducting a survey of birds in our state. This is known as a bird atlas. This includes counting birds all across the state in all seasons. There’s an opportunity for citizens to participate. Since we put out bird feeders at our house year-round, we’re […]

Why is Snow White?

On my phone I keep a list of questions that my daughters (ages 4 and 5) ask me. The questions are about things that I haven’t thought about for a long time, if ever. For example, last week my youngest asked me why snow is white. If you have kids who are wondering about the […]

Five Short Lessons About the Start of Winter

Even though it has been cold and snowy here in Maine for the last week or so, the start of winter is still eleven days away. The winter solstice is always welcomed as it does mean the shortest day of the year (in terms of amount of sunlight) will be behind us. If you’re looking […]

Why Do We Have Winter? – Another Question from My Daughters

Yesterday afternoon I was playing outside in the snow with my five-year-old daughter when she asked, “why do we have winter?” She didn’t ask in a complaining way (she loves playing the snow), but in a genuinely curious way. My short answer was that where we live on Earth is tilted away from the sun […]

Why the Moon Seems Brighter in Winter

We had our first coating of snow this week. (It’s unusual to go this late into fall without having a snowfall). As I was putting my daughters to bed last night my oldest asked why it was so bright outside. My short answer was that the snow reflected the street lights and the moon light. […]

A Science Lesson for Winter Application

Winter temperatures have arrived in Maine. There’s a light coating of snow on the ground. And my daughters and I are excited about the start of ski season! While we like all of these things about winter, there is one thing we don’t like. That thing is dealing with cracked, chapped, and dry lips. During […]

Germ Science Investigation – A Game About Stopping the Spread of COVID-19

Germ Science Investigation is a free online game that is designed to help students understand how to stop the transmission of COVID-19. The game has four “missions” for students to complete. Students complete the missions by answering a series of scenario-based questions. Students are given instant feedback after answering each question. If they answer a […]

What’s Snoring? – Another Question from my Daughters

For nearly twenty years I’ve gone to an ice fishing camp every winter with the same group of guys (except for last winter). Some of them are rather loud snorers. In fact, the loud snorers have their own bunk room in the lodge. I was talking about this the other day when my daughter asked, […]

My Big List of Resources for Teaching & Learning About American Thanksgiving

American Thanksgiving is later this week. All month long I’ve been sharing Thanksgiving-themed resources and ideas. This post combines all of them into one place. If you have school this week and you’re looking for some last-minute Thanksgiving resources, take a look through this list.  The Science of Thanksgiving Foods The Reactions YouTube channel, produced […]

The Science of My Favorite Thanksgiving Foods

I don’t think there’s a meal I like better than a classic Thanksgiving turkey with potatoes, squash, stuffing and cranberry sauce from a can (my mouth is watering just thinking about the “shlop” sound the cranberry sauce makes as it pops out of the can). Behind all of that deliciousness is a whole lot of […]

Samsung Solve for Tomorrow – Only Two Weeks Left to Enter

Disclosure: Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow contest is a STEM project contest that awards large educational technology prizes to public schools in the United States. As I outlined a few weeks ago, the contest places a premium on student-teacher collaboration as well as project effectiveness.   It takes […]

It’s That Time Again…

Daylight Saving Time ends today for many of my friends in Europe and it ends next Sunday for those of us in North American states and provinces that observe Daylight Saving Time. As someone who gets up early and lives in a northern state, I welcome the change as I’ll see the sun an hour […]

A Short Lesson on the Long History of Electric Cars

The Surprisingly Long History of Electric Cars is a new TED-Ed lesson that should be of interest to anyone who is curious about electric vehicles. The video begins with an explanation of the first electric cars and why they were overtaken by gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. The second half of the video explains the technological, […]

Accessible Online Physics Simulations

PhET is a service that provides free interactive math and science simulations covering topics in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. It has been popular with science and math teachers for many years. Recently, I learned that PhET has been developing some simulations that offer online accessibility features including alternative inputs for navigation and […]

The Science of Cake! – And 83 Other Food Science Lessons

If you ask my five-year-old what she wants to be when she grows up she’ll say, “a cake maker!” She’s been helping decorate cookies and cakes since before her third birthday. She loves it when we let her watch clips of The Great British Baking Show. That’s why I was excited to come across an […]

The Physics of Riding Bicycles

Last Sunday afternoon something happened in my life that I will never forget. That event was my oldest daughter roding her bicycle down our driveway on her own! No training wheels, no Dad holding on to the back of her seat, completely on her own! It was awesome! She did it a few more times […]

Questions from My Daughters – Why Do We Sneeze?

My daughters ask me lots of questions that I haven’t thought about since I was their age (4 and 5). Many of those questions I write in a list titled Questions from My Daughters that I have saved on my phone via Google Keep. “Why do we sneeze?” is one of the questions that my […]

What Would We Eat on Mars? And Other Fun Science Questions

Long-time followers of my blog have probably noticed that I really like the videos produced by SciShow Kids. Their videos cover a wide range of science topics and almost all of them answer questions that elementary school students are apt to ask. For example, one of the recent releases from SciShow Kids asks, “what would […]

The 2021 Fall Foliage Map – And Explanations of Why Leaves Change Colors

The 2021 Fall Foliage Prediction Map is a feature of the SmokyMountains.com website. The map displays a week-by-week prediction of when leaves in the continental United States will be changing colors from now through the end of November. You can see the predictions change by moving the timeline at the bottom of the map. On […]

Five Ideas for Using Google Earth & Maps for More Than Social Studies Lessons

Later this week I’m conducting an online professional development workshop about Google Earth and Maps. One of my goals for the workshop is to help participants develop ideas for using Google Earth and Google Maps for more than just geography and history lessons. To that end I’ve put together a short list of ideas and […]

Short Lessons on Geothermal Energy and Volcanoes

Iceland is one my favorite places to visit. (I hope to take my daughters there to hike and camp when they’re a bit older). That’s why I was excited to see a new TED-Ed lesson about Iceland released last week. To say the lesson is about Iceland doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s really about […]

A Game and a Crash Course on Weathering and Erosion

The Crash Course for Kids YouTube channel offers overviews of various topics including weather. Weathering and Erosion is the topic of one of the more recent releases on Crash Course for Kids. In the video students will see a comparison of Cape Cod’s coastline in 1984 and 2014. That image combined with the commentary does a great […]

Superhero Science Lessons

Superhero Science is a playlist of science lessons published by TED-Ed. The lessons in the playlist feature explanations of what would happen in various scenarios if you had superhero powers like flight, strength, and speed. Each lessons explains the mathematics and science of scenarios frequently found in superhero stories. For example, in the lesson on […]

An Itchy Science Lesson

Summer here in northern New England brings us long and sunny days that make us forget about the short and frigid days of winter. Those sunny days come with a catch. The catch is blooming poison ivy and biting insects that make us itch. But what really makes us itch? Is there any way to […]

The Freshwater Access Game

Aquation is a free iOS, Android, and web game offered by the the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The game, designed for students in upper elementary school or middle school, teaches students about the distribution of clean water and what can be done to balance global water resources. In the game students select a region to […]

See the Elements Present in Common Products – The Periodic Table in Pictures and Words

The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures and Words is an interactive site that shows students how each element is used or is present in familiar products. When students click on an element in the interactive display an image of a familiar product or object appears along with a description of the element and its […]

How Rockets Fly – And DIY Model Rockets

This morning Jeff Bezos is blasting into space on a new rocket designed by his company, Blue Origin. The BBC has a succinct overview of how the rocket is designed to work. For a kid-friendly explanation of how rockets work, turn to SciShow Kids. Last week SciShow Kids released a video titled How Do Rockets […]

All About Rubber

Here in Maine we’ve had more rainy days than sunny days lately. That means we’ve been wearing our rainboots a lot. Yesterday, as I was trying to convince my daughters to wear their rainboots instead of sneakers my four-year-old asked “what’s rubber?” To which I replied that it’s a waterproof material used in boots to […]

Add PhET Simulations to Your PowerPoint Slides

PhET is a free resource that has been popular with science and math teachers for many years. PhET provides free interactive math and science simulations covering topics in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. In the PhET library you’ll find simulations appropriate for elementary, middle, high school, and university students. PhET even offers a search tool that […]

How Seashells Are Made – A Lesson for Beachcombers

If your summer plans, like ours, include going to the ocean, you may be interested in this video from Reactions about how seashells are made. In How Seashells Are Made viewers learn that seashells are made of 95% calcium carbonate and 5% protein and sugar. The video doesn’t stop with just listing the components of seashells. […]

Short Lessons on the Science of Fireworks

Independence Day here in the United States is ten days away. Nothing says, “Happy Fourth of July” like a fireworks display. Watching Fourth of July fireworks displays is a quintessential part of the American experience in the summer. This year my daughters are just about old enough to stay up late enough to watch the […]

Four Summer Science Lessons

Summer is here in the northern hemisphere. It’s a great time to go outside and soak up some sunshine. A little vitamin D is good for everybody. This is also a time when many schools run summer enrichment programs that provide kids with some learning activities that might not otherwise happen during the school year. […]

All About the Tour de France

The Tour de France begins at the end of this week. As an avid cyclist I enjoy watching it and I find that it provides some neat opportunities for science, health, and physical education lessons. Here are some of my go-to resources for teaching and learning about the Tour de France. The Science of Bicycles […]

It’s Sea Turtle Week – Five Short Lessons

Earlier this week when I was checking the weather forecast on NOAA.gov I noticed a banner announcing that this week is Sea Turtle Week. Prior to that I didn’t know that there is a Sea Turtle Week. None-the-less it reminded me of the time that I witnessed sea turtles nesting in Costa Rica and it […]

How Tall Can a LEGO Tower Get? – Life’s Biggest Questions

While getting caught up on my reading in Feedly this morning I came across a new comic from The Oatmeal. The comic addresses the question, “how tall can a LEGO tower get?” (It’s a copyright-protected work so you’ll have to view it on The Oatmeal website). The comic is based on a 2012 BBC article […]

Science Research Papers Annotated With Teaching Resources

Science in the Classroom is a free resource for teachers from Science Magazine. On Science in the Classroom you will find research papers containing interactive annotations to help students understand the content of the papers. In the right hand margin of each paper you will find a section called “learning lens.” The learning lens offers […]

Running Free Rivers

River Runner is a neat website that shows you how a drop of water travels from anywhere in the United States to the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, or the Gulf of Mexico. To use River Runner simply go to the site and click on any location in the United States. As soon as you […]

All About Plants – Three SciShow Kids Lessons

Spring has finally, fully arrived here in Maine. Our flowers are in full bloom and this weekend we’re putting together garden boxes for growing vegetables. Planting flowers and vegetables is a great way to spark kids’ curiosity and to develop some hands-on learning experiences. If you can’t plant flowers or vegetables with kids, but want […]

Sherlock Bones – A Virtual Owl Pellet Dissection Activity

One of the great things about living where I do is that a walk in the woods is always just a few steps away. One of my favorite things about walking in the woods is finding all kinds of neat, natural things including dropped moose and deer antlers. While those are rare finds, I do […]

Birdcams for Spring Observations

We have robins and finches nesting in the hanging plants on our porch and in the eave of our garage. This morning when I let our dogs out at 4:45 all of the birds were still in their nests with their little heads poking up to see what all of the commotion was about. Yes, […]

DIY Wind Turbines and How They Work

Earlier this week TED-Ed published a new lesson titled How Do Wind Turbines Work? The video covers the basics of how the turbines harness the power of wind to generate electricity. The basic math of wind turbine design is also explained to viewers of the video. Overall, it’s a fine lesson but not the most detailed […]

Braingenie is Shutting Down – Transition to CK-12

Braingenie is a service that the CK-12 Foundation has offered for free for many years. It provided online practice activities addressing concepts in math and science for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. Unfortunately, CK-12 is ending the Braingenie service. However, there is some good news. Many of the practice activities and services […]

Four Short Lessons About the Arrival of Spring

The snow is melting, the sun is shining a bit longer, and we’re starting to see and hear more birds around our house. Those are all sure signs that spring is on the horizon here in Maine. On that note, here are some short lessons about the arrival of spring.  Why do birds sing? And […]

A Sweet Science Project

My daughters, like almost all children, love candy! So my daughters and I are going to attempt to make our own rock candy this weekend. They love doing little projects like this and I’m hoping that they’ll like this one as well. The inspiration for doing this came from watching a recent SciShow Kids episode […]

The Wall of Birds – Hear the Calls of Birds and See Their Ranges

We’re starting to see some birds returning to feeders around our house. Before too long we’ll be waking up to the sounds of bird calls. Seeing the birds return reminded me of a great resource from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. That resource is the Wall of Birds.  The Wall of Birds is a neat site […]

Daddy, What Are Hiccups?

My youngest daughter had hiccups twice this week. On Friday morning she asked, “what are hiccups?” Fortunately, I knew the answer. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a great way of explaining involuntary muscle contractions to a three-year-old. I did my best and told her that it’s part of her body’s way of growing and getting stronger […]

It’s Maple Syrup Time, Yay!

Here in Maine we’re starting to notice that the days are getting a little longer and the sun is a little higher in the sky during the day. That means, as a few of my friends pointed out on social media this week, it’s time to start tapping maple trees for syrup season.  The process […]

Build a Solar Oven – Hands-on Science Project

This week SciShow Kids released a new video about a favorite hands-on science project, building a solar oven. As you might expect, the video explains the science of using solar energy and explains the basics of how to build a solar oven. However, the video isn’t quite detailed enough to be the only source that […]

Some of my Favorites – Geocaching!

This week is school vacation week here in Maine. I usually take this week off to go ice fishing on Moosehead Lake. Unfortunately, that’s not happening this year. Instead I’ll be “staycationing” and working on some projects around home. While on my staycation I’ll be sharing some of my personal favorite tools. Geocaching is one […]

Edible Glass Hearts and Other Lessons About Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is this coming Sunday. My daughter’s preschool is having a little celebration on Friday during which little cards will be exchanged. She’s very excited about Valentine’s Day as is her little sister. As I write this they’re making Valentine’s Day cookies (with supervision). Another Valentine’s Day activity that they could be doing (with […]

My NASA Data Story Maps – Lesson Plans Based on NASA Data

A few weeks ago I published a summary of nine neat NASA resources for teachers and students. Shortly after that I received an email from someone at NASA who pointed me in the direction of My NASA Data.  My NASA Data is much more than just a collection of datasets published by NASA. My NASA […]

How Many People Does it Take to Make a Cup of Coffee?

I drink a lot of coffee! Thanks to the timer on my coffee maker my day usually starts by smelling freshly brewed coffee at 4:47am. Making the coffee is pretty simple task in my house; pour in some water, add some ground beans into the filter, and set the timer. But getting the roasted coffee […]

Nine Neat NASA Resources for Students and Teachers – Updated

Years ago I published a list of nine neat NASA resources for students and teachers. At the time the list was current. Over the weekend someone emailed me to point out that few of them were no longer available due to the deprecation of Flash. Here’s my updated list of neat NASA resources for students […]

Four At-home Science Experiments for Kids

Winter in Maine has lots of short and cold days. While I take my kids outside for sledding and skiing as much as possible, we still need to keep a list of fun indoor activities. That’s why I subscribe to the SciShow Kids channel on YouTube. It regularly features science experiments that are perfect for […]

Fun Facts About Reindeer

My daughters are at the age that they believe in Santa Claus. For weeks they’ve been talking about snacks for Santa and his reindeer. They’re a little too young for this SciShow Kids video about reindeer, but if you have kids who are in elementary school you might want to show them 4 Facts to […]

Five Interesting Lessons About Winter Weather

There is no doubt that winter has arrived here in Maine. The temperature was in the single digits (Fahrenheit) most mornings this week and we had our second significant snow fall this week. The chill in the air and the snow on the ground prompted me to look back at some of my favorite videos […]

The Growth of Mount Everest – A Math and Geology Lesson

Mount Everest is nearly a meter taller than it was a day ago. No, it didn’t actually grow a meter overnight. China and Nepal have agreed on a new measurement for the height of Mount Everest. There are at least two lessons that can be developed out of this news.  One of the reasons for […]

A Virtual Tour and Videos for Learning About Breaking the Sound Barrier

Chuck Yeager died yesterday at the age of 97. He was the first person to fly an airplane faster than the speed of sound. The BBC’s article about Chuck Yeager’s passing included some archival footage of his flight in the Bell X-1 that he flew. Watching that footage reminded me of the Smithsonian Air & […]

Three Thanksgiving Science Lessons

I don’t think there’s a meal I like better than a classic Thanksgiving turkey with potatoes, squash, stuffing and cranberry sauce from a can (my mouth is watering just thinking about the “shlop” sound the cranberry sauce makes as it pops out of the can). Behind all of that deliciousness is a whole lot of […]

How Batteries Work – And a Resource for Safely Experimenting With Circuits

From cell phones to laptops to toys we and our students rely on batteries for a lot of what we do in our daily lives. But have you ever stopped to think about how batteries actually work? Or have you asked your students to think about it? TED-Ed offers a good lesson that answers the […]

Ten Resources for Learning About U.S. National Parks

Last week TED-Ed published a new lesson about national parks. The lesson explains the origins of the U.S. National Parks system and concludes with explanations of the challenges facing national parks managers around the world. The lesson also explains how parks managers try to balance access and conservation while also respecting the rights of indigenous […]

Poe, Halloween, and Phys Ed

We’re a full week into October and I haven’t shared any Halloween-themed resources. That’s unlike me. My excuse is that 2020 has been a year unlike any other. And even though we won’t be trick-o-treating or passing out candy this year, my daughters and some of my students are still excited about Halloween. On that […]

“Why Do We Have Fall?” – A Post Inspired by My Daughter

  “Why do we have fall?” That was the question that my four year old asked while we were walking in the woods yesterday.  It was a good question (she’s full of good questions these days) and I tried my best to explain that different times of the year have more or less sunlight which […]

The Google Science Journal App is Now the Arduino Science Journal

  For the last few years the Google Science Journal app has been one of my favorite apps to incorporate into outdoor learning experiences. Earlier this week I got a notification that the Google Science Journal app is becoming the Arduino Science Journal app. On December 11, 2020 the Google Science Journal app will stop […]

Resources for Teaching and Learning About the Colorful Leaves of Fall

 Autumn is my favorite time of year. So much so that I wanted to name my younger daughter Autumn (vetoed by her mother). The crisp air, the smells of apple harvest, the colors of spawning brook trout, and the colors of leaves are just a few things that I enjoy about fall. All that to […]

Three Video Lessons That Are Full of Poop

SciShow Kids has long been one my favorite YouTube channels for elementary school science videos. It went on hiatus for a while then it came roaring back a few weeks ago. One of the new releases on SciShow Kids is all about dung beetles. That, of course, brought out the ten-year-old in me and I […]

Using a Bicycle as a Generator

This morning I welcomed my new students into my classroom. In talking with one of them I learned that he likes to tinker with old bicycles. As we were talking he mentioned trying to create a power generator with a bicycle. That conversation took us to YouTube where we started looking at videos about using […]

Add Science & Math Simulations to Google Sites

In the latest episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff I shared an update about a favorite math and science resource. That resource is PhET. PhET offers more than 150 online, interactive science and math simulations. For a while now PhET has been in the process of switching their simulations […]

SciShow Kids Returns Next Week!

A little over a year ago SciShow Kids, one of my favorite YouTube channels, announced a hiatus. I thought that was going to be then end of the channel. Much to my surprise this afternoon I saw an update from the channel announcing its return. SciShow Kids returns next week with new videos for elementary […]

A Few Short Lessons About Sharks for Shark Week

This week is Discovery’s annual Shark Week. All week long the Discovery Channel and it’s affiliated channels will broadcast all kinds of shows about sharks. Those shows will range from serious and educational to ridiculous (Mike Tyson “fighting” a shark). If you find yourself looking from some short, educational videos about sharks to share with […]

Got Toddlers? Bookmark This Website

If you have toddlers at home like I do, Stain Solutions is a website that need to bookmark today. Stain Solutions is a handy website developed by Susan Taylor at the University of Illinois Extension. The site is a database of solutions for removing more than 200 common stains like coffee, bird poop, and white […]

Three Lessons on the Chemistry of Coffee

One of the things that I’ve missed the most over the last few months is going to my local coffee shop (Cafe Nomad) and having some of the excellent coffee that they brew. Try as I might, the coffee I brew at home just isn’t the same quality of what they make at the cafe. […]

Cincinnati Zoo Offers Daily Virtual Zoo Visits

We’re halfway through 2020. This week I’m taking some time off from the blog to work on some other projects. The rest of this week I’m going to re-run some of the most popular posts and videos of the year so far.  Back in March I my sister, who lives near Cincinnati, shared a Facebook […]

Expedition Everest – 360 Video from National Geographic

National Geographic has one of my favorite YouTube channels. I’ve been fascinated with Mount Everest for as long as I can remember That’s why I was excited yesterday when Nat Geo published a new 360 video about a scientific expedition to Mount Everest. Expedition Everest: The Mission is a five minute overview and introduction to […]

Spacecraft AR – Explore NASA Spacecraft With Augmented Reality

Spacecraft AR is a free iPad and Android app offered by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The app enables students to learn about various NASA spacecraft including the Curiosity rover, Voyager, Mars Exploration Rover, and a handful of other spacecraft. Spacecraft AR includes information about each spacecraft’s development and use. With Spacecraft AR installed and open […]

The National Zoo’s Activities You Can Do at Home

My daughters are currently obsessed with a book titled On the Loose in Washington D.C. It’s a book created in the “Where’s Waldo” style, but instead of having to find Waldo you have to find animals. The premise of the book is that all of the animals have escaped from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and […]

Acoustic Atlas – Sounds of the Wild West

Acoustic Atlas is a Montana State University Library project that features an ArcGIS Storymap. The Acoustic Atlas storymap is an audio and visual tour of Montana’s four ecosystems. As you scroll through Acoustic Atlas you will see read text and see pictures of the four ecosystems. While scrolling you will also hear the sounds of birds, […]

Try Your Hand at Bird Identification With the Audubon Bird App

We have a bunch of bird feeders hanging outside of house. My daughters love seeing the various birds that visit our feeders. I particularly enjoy seeing orioles come to one of our feeders. My daughters (2 and 3 years old) are curious about the names of many of the birds that come to the feeders. […]

National Parks Games and Challenges – Try Virtual National Parks Bingo

I love the National Parks service that we have here in the U.S. One of the things I’m looking forward to doing with my kids when they’re a little older is to help them explore some of the places in National Parks and National Forests that I’ve enjoyed in my life. My love of the […]

USGS Find a Feature Challenges – Outdoor Learning Opportunities

Last week I wrote about the Learning from Home resources available from the USGS. While it’s not specifically a part of the Learning from Home resources, USGS offers another selection of activities that can be used for “at home” learning. Those activities are called Find a Feature. The USGS Find a Feature challenge is a […]

USGS Offers Online and Hands-on Learning from Home Resources

Since I was in elementary school I have enjoyed looking at maps and day dreaming about the places those maps depict. I like maps so much I have a couple of USGS topographical maps on the wall in my office. So whenever the USGS emails me with something new, I immediately investigate it. The latest […]

Live Weather Lessons for Kids Hosted by a Meteorologist

Mallory Brooke is a meteorologist who lives in and is an active part of my local community. In addition to giving weather forecasts on a couple of our local television news stations, she runs a firm called Nor’Easter Weather Consulting. Last night she announced that starting next week she’ll be giving live weather lessons to […]

Free Historical Coloring Pages

If you’re looking for an offline activity that you can recommend to parents for their students to do at home, take a look at the New York Academy of Medicine’s Color Our Collections website. The site contains contributions from more than one hundred museums and libraries around the world. The participating museums and libraries offered […]

Teamimg – Collaborate to Make Interactive Images

Teamimg is a free tool that is a bit like Thinglink and Classtools’ Image Annotator without the hyperlinks. Teamimg lets you upload an image and share it. Once uploaded you can click on the image to write comments and reply to the comments that other people have written. The comment threads can be expanded or collapsed […]

Sweet Lessons on the Making of Maple Syrup

This week we had a couple of relatively warm days here in Maine. In fact it was so warm (40F) that I rode my bike outside on Thursday. It was on that ride that I noticed sap buckets and hoses on some maple trees. That reminded me of some videos about making maple syrup that […]

How to Measure, Share, and Download 3D Models from the Smithsonian

Last week the Smithsonian launched a new collection of nearly three million digital artifacts that you can download and reuse for free. I published a video about how to access and search through that new collection. For the sake of brevity I didn’t include everything that you can do with the artifacts in the Smithsonian’s […]

Kissing, Love, and Math – Three Valentine’s Day Lessons

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. It is also day of the Winter Carnival Dance at my school. In short, love and hormones will be flying all around the hallways of my school tomorrow. Perhaps the same will be happening in your middle school or high school. If you’re looking to work a little Valentine’s Day themed […]

Cotton and the Life Cycle of a Tee Shirt

Last week TED-Ed published a new lesson titled Why Is Cotton In Everything? The lesson begins with an explanation of why cotton was used by the Inca in suits of armor. From there the lesson delves into the properties of cotton that make strong, soft, and flexible. The bulk of the lesson is then spent on […]

Biomes and Ecoregions Interactive Map

Ecoregions 2017 is an interactive map produced by Resolve for the purpose of showing the ecoregions and biomes of the world. When you visit the map you can choose to display either ecoregions or biomes. After you make that selection you can then click on any location on the map to discover the ecoregion or […]

Four Interesting Lessons About Winter Weather

When I got up to let my dogs out yesterday morning it was a brisk -10f with the windchill. When I got in my car an hour later the thermometer had reached a balmy 4f. The chill in the air prompted me to look back at some of my favorite videos for learning about winter […]

Why the Moon Seems Brighter in Winter

During lunch today one of my colleagues mentioned that he had trouble falling asleep a couple of nights ago because the moon was exceptionally bright. His comment reminded me of a great Minute Physics video that I found years ago. Why the Full Moon is Better in Winter explains how the combination of the position […]

Three Videos for Thanksgiving Lessons

Thanksgiving is just a few days away. If you find yourself looking for a quick, Thanksgiving-themed video lesson to use this week, take a look at the following three options. The Chemistry of Thanksgiving The Thanksgiving Turkey Compilation from the Reactions YouTube channel explains two concepts related to the traditional Thanksgiving turkey. First, it explains how the deep-frying process […]

The History of Thermometers and Barometers

Many moons ago when I was an undergrad I took a meteorology course. It was my favorite course outside of my major. I’m still fascinated by weather and weather forecasting. In fact, for my next career I might become a meteorologist. All that to say, I was naturally interested when I came across a Met […]

Actively Learn – Find & Create Engaging Reading Assignments and More

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post that I wrote for a new supporter of FreeTech4Teachers.com.  A few years ago I stumbled upon Actively Learn while walking through the ISTE conference. I was immediately impressed by what they were developing. At that time it was just getting started as a new platform through which teachers can […]

Math & Science Halloween Lessons

This afternoon one of my students asked me what my daughters are going to be for Halloween. That question reminded me that Halloween will be here soon. If you find yourself starting to look for some Halloween-themed math or science lessons for elementary school, take a look at the following items. PBS Learning Media also […]

What’s in Pumpkin Spice?

Walk into a Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, or Tim Horton’s at this time of year and you’re bombarded with offerings for pumpkin spice this and pumpkin spice that! According to this CNBC report pumpkin spice is a $600 million flavor. What’s in the pumpkin spice that so many people love? That question is in this SciShow […]

2019 Fall Foliage Map – And Why Leaves Change Color

The 2019 Fall Foliage Prediction Map is a feature of the SmokyMountains.com website. The map displays a week-by-week prediction of when leaves in the continental United States will be changing colors from now through the end of November. You can see the predictions change by moving the timeline at the bottom of the map. On […]

Try This! – A Series of Hands-on Science Lessons for Kids

Try This! is a series of videos produced by National Geographic Kids. Each of the videos in the series presents a hands-on science lesson or experiment that elementary school and middle school kids will enjoy. Middle school students can probably do all of the experiments in the Try This! series on their own. Elementary school […]

Why Do Whales Sing? – A Lesson Prompted by My Daughters

As you may know, I have two toddler-age daughters. So as you might guess, our bathtub is full of bath toys. One of those toys is a water scoop that is made to look like a whale. Tonight, during bath time my oldest asked, “what’s a whale say?” Not being able to make a whale […]

Sharks in Street View!

On Friday morning I shared a few good resources for learning about sharks. Another neat way for students to learn about sharks is through the Google Earth voyage titled Searching for Sharks in Street View. This is a seven part voyage created with imagery captured by The Ocean Agency. The voyage takes viewers to seven […]

Ginger Ale, Stomach Aches, and Placebos

Over the weekend and through the first part of this week I was stricken with a flu-like bug that had me doing nothing more than sleeping and occasionally throwing up. As you might guess, I ate a lot of saltines and drank a lot of ginger ale to settle my stomach. It worked, but it […]

Neil and Buzz Go For a Walk – A Tour of the First Hours on the Moon

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. By now you’ve probably seen Google’s Google Earth story about the mission. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a few minutes of your time. Neil and Buzz Go For a Walk is another neat site about the Apollo 11 mission that’s worth […]

What’s the Fastest Tire Pressure? – A Science Lesson

Global Cycling Network is a popular YouTube channel that produces high-quality videos about all aspects of bicycle riding. The videos are hosted by retired professional cyclists. The topics covered by GCN range from basics like picking a proper helmet to more nuanced topics like finding the tire pressure that will make you fastest on your […]

A Super Shark Lesson for Kids for Shark Week

Every summer Discovery runs a week of programming all about sharks. They call it Shark Week and it usually has some interesting content even if it is a bit sensationalized. That said, my daughters won’t be watching it with me and I don’t recommend it for other young children. But if you are looking for […]

The Science of Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Like most toddlers, my daughters love grilled cheese sandwiches. I enjoy a good one too. My daughters prefer the ones mommy makes to the ones that I make. Again, I do too. She just seems to have a better grasp of the art and science of making a good grilled cheese. While the art of […]

Satellite Observations of Arctic Change

Satellite imagery gives students, teachers, and professional researchers access to lots of information to analyze and interpret. Through timelapses of satellite imagery students can see how landscapes and seascapes change over time. Some timelapses of satellite imagery can be found in Google Earth. The National Snow & Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado […]

Deserts 101 – A Nice Nat Geo Lesson

National Geographic offers a good series of more than one hundred YouTube videos designed to provide viewers with concise explanations of the big concepts of a variety of topics in science. The series includes videos about volcanoes, plastics creation and recycling, the solar system, and invasive species. The latest video added to the National Geographic […]

Lessons on the Science of Fireworks

The Fourth of July is Independence Day here in the United States. And nothing says, “Happy Fourth of July” like a fireworks display. Watching Fourth of July fireworks displays is a quintessential part of the American experience in the summer. I’m looking forward to the day when my daughters will be old enough to stay […]

Two Lessons About Invasive Species and the Threats They Pose

My favorite bike training ride goes through a portion of the White Mountains National Forest on the Maine-New Hampshire border. As you enter the forest you’ll see reminders about not bringing in firewood from outside of the area. The reason for the reminders is to prevent the spread of invasive insects that can damage the […]

Interactive Maps of Migrations and Changes of Seasons

Over the years I’ve featured Project Noah and the USA Phenology Network’s maps as platforms through which students can track the changes of seasons in North America. Recently, through the Maps Mania blog I learned about another good site that students can use to track the changes in seasons. That site is called Journey North. […]

Beaker – Virtually Mix Chemicals on Your Phone or Tablet

Beaker is an iOS and Android app that lets students virtually mix chemicals. In the app students can select chemicals to mix to see how they react to each other. The app also has a virtual match that students can light to see how chemicals react to heat. The most impressive feature of the app […]

5 Things You Can Teach Through Geocaching

Geocaching is one of the things that I spend a good bit of time talking about in both my workshop and in my webinar 5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Learning. Geocaching is a great activity to do to get kids outside for hands-on learning experiences. Here are five things that you can teach […]

5 Tips for New Google Expeditions Users

Image copyright: Richard Byrne Google Expeditions is often the first educational virtual reality tool that I introduce to teachers who come to one of my workshops. Here are five tips that I frequently pass along to teachers who are preparing to use Google Expeditions for the first time. If you have never used Expeditions, you […]

Google Earth Timelapses and Historical Imagery

Google Earth Pro (the desktop version of Google Earth) has offered historical imagery for many years. You can access that imagery by selecting the timeslider icon in the menu at the top of Google Earth when it is open on your desktop. Today, Google unveiled some updates to their Google Earth Engine Timelapse website that […]

What Is Turbulence? – A Physics Lesson You Can Feel

At the end of 2018 I shared a half-dozen resources for learning about the science of flight. This morning I watched a new TED-Ed lesson that will make a nice addition to my list of resources about aviation. Turbulence: One of the Great Unsolved Mysteries of Physics is a new TED-Ed lesson that explains what […]

The Google Science Journal App Now Saves Data in Google Drive

Google’s Science Journal app is one that I regularly feature in my presentations and workshops about blending technology into outdoor lessons. With the app (available for iOS and Android) students can record data about acceleration, location, sound, light, and barometric pressure. Those are just a handful of the things that students can measure and record […]

Braingenie – Math & Science Practice from CK-12

Braingenie is a free service offered by the CK-12 Foundation. Braingenie provides online math and science practice activities for elementary, middle, and high school students. Braingenie’s library of activities is divided into nine sections and many subsections. The nine sections are 1-8 Math, Brain Math, Algebra I, Algebra II, Precalculus, 6-8 Science, Biology, Chemistry, and […]

A Few Good Resources for Earth Day Lessons

Earth Day is a couple of weeks away. Here are a few resources that you might consider incorporating into your Earth Day lesson plans. I’ll be sharing more resources later this week. ARMAP is a comprehensive resource of interactive, online maps of Arctic research. ARMAP’s resources include files for use in Google Earth as well as […]

5 Resources for Teaching and Learning About the Science of Baseball

The Major League Baseball season started yesterday. The Yankees won, boo! The Red Sox lost, double boo! If you have students who are as excited as I am about the start of the baseball season, try to capitalize on that enthusiasm with one of the following educational resources. Exploratorium’s the Science of Baseball is a bit dated […]

Lessons About the Making of Maple Syrup

Today is Maple Syrup Sunday here in Maine. This is always a welcome sign of spring. The method of collecting sap from maple trees has changed a bit over the years, but the concept of boiling sap to make syrup remains unchanged. In the following videos you’ll see the traditional collection method and the modern […]

Short Lessons for the Arrival of Spring

The first chickadees and ducks of the spring have started to arrive in my neighborhood. Aside from the calendar, hearing the birds reminds us all that spring is almost here. If you’re tired of winter and looking for some spring-themed lesson ideas, take a look at the following resources. Last year The New York Times published an animated […]

The Science of Surfing

The Physics of Surfing is a new TED-Ed lesson that was released this morning. The short lesson explains how waves are formed, why they get bigger as they approach shore, and the geological influences that make waves bigger in some areas than others. The lesson also covers how surfboard shapes affect the way surfers ride […]

Nature Sound Map – Explore the Sounds of Nature

Nature Sound Map provides a neat way to explore the soundscape of the natural world. On the Nature Sound Map you will find placemarks containing recordings of nature. The recordings have been added to the project by professional sound recorders. Some of the recordings you will find feature the sounds of just one animal, the sounds […]

Getting Started With the Smithsonian Learning Lab

The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create and search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans from a wide range of Smithsonian-hosted resources. It also lets you create collections to share with others as well as create assignments to give to your students. The video playlist embedded below teaches you how to […]

What Makes It Windy? – Lessons for Kids

The wind has been howling here in Maine for the last two days. As my daughter says, “it’s soooo windy.” She asked me this morning why it was so windy outside. That’s a hard concept for a two year old to grasp, but I tried my best to explain it to her. If you have […]

Wiggle & Stomp – A Fun App for Learning About Animals

Shutterbugs Wiggle and Stomp is an educational game produced by the Smithsonian. The purpose of the game is to help children recognize the movements of animals. In the game children move through a virtual zoo with a zoo keeper. As they go through the virtual zoo the zoo keeper will ask students to take pictures […]

eMammal Lite – Practice Identifying Animals and Learn Where They Live

eMammal Lite is an online activity based on the wildlife photographs on the Smithsonian’s eMammal site. eMammal was previously known as Smithsonian Wild. All of the pictures on both sites were captured by camera traps. Camera traps are wildlife cameras that are triggered by motion when an animal walks in front of a sensor. On eMammal […]

An Online Lab for Learning About Weather Patterns and Forecasts

The Smithsonian Science Education Center’s Weather Lab is one of many online learning activities produced and hosted by the Smithsonian. The Weather Lab is designed to help elementary and middle school students learn about weather patterns. In the Weather Lab students select an ocean current and an air mass then try to predict the weather pattern that will result […]

How Ocean Currents Work – And 24 Other Lessons About Oceans

How Do Ocean Currents Work? is a TED-Ed lesson that makes a fantastic addition to TED-Ed’s list of lessons about oceans. The list now has 25 lessons covering a range of ocean-related topics including how waves are formed, the depths of oceans, and lessons about marine life. In How Do Ocean Currents Work? viewers learn […]

Building Models to Understand Brain Injury – A Hacking STEM Project

I’m still working through many of the notes that I took during the 2019 BETT Show that wrapped up in a London a couple of weeks ago. One of the new things that I saw there was a new Hacking STEM project called Building Models to Understand and Mitigate Brain Injury. This is one the […]

Six Educational Activities That Have a Super Bowl Theme

The Super Bowl is this weekend. My prediction is that the Patriots will win. I’m guessing that my American readers have a student or two who has an interest in the game too. Try one of the following resources to turn your students’ enthusiasm for the Super Bowl into a fun lesson. NBC’s Science of […]

Take Your Class On a NFL Virtual Field Trip

The Super Bowl is happening this weekend. If your students have an interest in football, you might be interested in a virtual field trip that the NFL and Discovery Education are hosting tomorrow. NFL Play 60 Kids Day Live is happening tomorrow at 12pm Eastern Time. The free virtual event will take kids on a […]

A Virtual Amusement Park About Molecules

The NanoSpace Molecularium is a nice educational game produced by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It is available to play in a web browser and is available as an iOS and Android app. The purpose of the game is to provide elementary school and middle school students with an introduction to the properties of atoms and molecules. The NanoSpace […]

Sun, Moon, and Planets 101

National Geographic’s YouTube channel has an excellent playlist that is titled National Geographic 101. As you might guess, the playlist is full of short overviews of the basics of a wide variety of topics in science and geography. In National Geographic 101 you will find short videos about Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Earth, Mercury, Mars, Pluto, […]

The Science of Snow and Ice

How to Survive the Snow and Ice is a new compilation video published on the Reactions YouTube channel. The video features segments about how snow (both natural and man-made) is formed, how ice is made, why saltwater takes longer to freeze than freshwater, and why kitty litter is better than regular sand for getting traction […]

Best of 2018 – The Periodic Table in Pictures and Words

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from July. The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures and Words is an interactive site that shows students […]

Best of 2018 – PhET PowerPoint Add-in

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from April. PhET is a free resource that has been popular with science and math teachers for many […]

Best of 2018 – NASA’s Interactive Guide to the Solar System

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from April. I have been reviewing and sharing sharing resources from NASA for almost as long as this […]

Best of 2018 – Free Hands-on STEM Lesson Plans

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular post of 2018. Here’s one from February. “Hacking STEM” was one of the initiatives that Microsoft was heavily promoting at the BETT Show […]

Best of 2018 – Interactive Periodic Table of Elements

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from February. There are lots of websites offering interactive or dynamic periodic tables. One that has been around […]

Six Resources for Learning About the Science of Flight

Yesterday marked the 115th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first successful airplane flight. That reminded me that I have a bunch of interesting resources for learning about the development of and science of flight. The Wright Brothers – The Invention of the Aerial Age is another good timeline for teaching about the developments made by the […]

Kids World Atlas – An iPad App for Learning About Animals Around the World

Last week I wrote a review of the Kids U.S. Atlas iPad app. That app offers an interactive map of the United States that kids can tap on to learn about 25 animals that are indigenous to the United States. Kids World Atlas is the companion app to the Kids U.S. Atlas. Kids World Atlas […]

Kids US Atlas – Learn About Animals of the United States

Kids US Atlas is an iPad app that features an interactive map of the United States. On the interactive map you will find twenty-five animals that are indigenous to the United States. Tap on the animals to read about them, to hear about them, and to watch videos about them. The text passages about the […]

Five Short Lessons About the Shortest Day of the Year

The winter solstice is about a week away. I always like to go outside to snowshoe or ski on the solstice just to say to the world that a lack of daylight isn’t going to ruin my fun. Not everyone feels the same way about the shortest day of the year. And if you’re looking […]

WWF Free Rivers – An Interactive, Augmented Reality Story About Rivers

WWF Free Rivers is a free augmented reality iPad app produced by the World Wildlife Foundation. The app uses augmented reality to present a story about rivers. In the app students learn about the importance of free-flowing rivers in world. The app offers a series of sections or experiences through which students can learn about […]

This TED-Ed Lesson Explains What Causes Heartburn – No, It’s Not Your Kids

At one time or another we’ve all suffered from a bout of heartburn. It usually happens to me if I drink soda pop (sometime the allure of a cold can of Coke on a hot day is too strong to resist). What else can cause heartburn? And what is actually happening in your body when […]

Free Environment Data Fact Sheets and Posters from the UN

The United Nations Environment Program offers a series of free posters based on data from the UNEP’s Geo Data Portal. These posters use charts, graphs, and maps to display information about environmental data. Some of the topics covered in these posters include electricity production and consumption, CO2 emissions, ecosystems management, and hazardous materials. Each fact sheet, poster, and infographic is […]

How Frost Appears on Plants – A Science Lesson

Here in Maine we’re way past worrying about frost in the morning. That’s because we’ve already had a few snow storms. But some of you may have frost on plants in the morning. SciShow Kids has a new video all about what causes frost to appear on plants in the fall. By watching It’s Time […]

What If You Stopped Sleeping? – Video Lesson

As the parent of a two year old and a one year old I know a thing or two about operating on little sleep. There are times when I wonder if I’ll ever get a full night’s sleep again. Which begs the question, “what if I stopped sleeping?” That question is the focus of an […]

Human Body Study Jams

Scholastic Study Jams are slideshows and animations that provide a short overview of various topics in science and math. The Human Body Study Jams from Scholastic provide short overviews of topics in anatomy and physiology. There are six Human Body Study Jams; skeletal system, nervous system, digestive system, respiratory system, muscular system, and circulatory system. Applications for […]

Measuring Mountains – A Math Lesson

A few years ago I read Mount Everest, The Reconnaissance 1921 which I downloaded for free from Google Books. In the introduction there is a three page explanation of the methods used to measure the height of Mount Everest. An explanation of the differences in measurements is also provided in the introduction. Part of that explanation includes differences […]

The Chemistry of Thanksgiving or “Why It’s Not the Turkey Making You Sleepy”

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States. Just like I did last year, on this Thanksgiving Eve I found a video that would have made for a nice Thanksgiving-themed lesson. So even though it is too late to use it this year, bookmark the Thanksgiving Turkey Compilation from the Reactions YouTube channel. The video […]

Mapping the Ingredients in Thanksgiving Meals

Last year on Thanksgiving I discovered an ESRI Storymap titled Where Does Your Thanksgiving Dinner Come From? Of course, having discovered it on Thanksgiving Day it was a bit too late to be useful so I’m sharing it again this year in advance of Thanksgiving. Where Does Your Thanksgiving Dinner Come From? displays where eight […]

Build a Body – An Interactive Biology Lesson

Spend a few minutes using Build a Body and it is easy to understand why it was recognized by the National Science Foundation. In Sponge Lab Biology’s Build a Body students construct a human body system-by-system. To build a body students drag and drop into place the organs and bones of a human body. Each […]

WWF Together – Revisiting a Favorite App

The World Wildlife Fund’s Together app has been one of my favorite iPad apps since the first day that I saw it more than five years ago. The app is beautifully designed to show the stories of endangered or threatened animals around the world. This morning it popped-up on my iPad as a featured app […]

Why Have Students Make Simple Animations?

Last week I wrote about having middle school students create presentations from a combination of illustrations and videos that they made. In that post I shared Brush Ninja animation tool. That’s just one of many tools that students could have used to animated GIFs to include in their slides. The point of the activity wasn’t […]

A Science, Math, and History Lesson in One Short Video

Reactions is a YouTube channel produced by the American Chemical Society and PBS Digital Studios. The videos in the channel focus on explaining how chemistry concepts as they relate to things we see every day or to interesting “what if” scenarios. Recently, Reactions published a video to explain how much tea it would take to […]

Why You Need a Flu Shot Every Year – A TED-Ed Science Lesson

This morning Lifehacker ran an article encouraging people to get a flu shot (the title of the article is not school-appropriate so I won’t link to it). The point of the article was to remind people that getting the flu shot isn’t just about them, it’s also about helping to keep your community healthy. Reading […]

Using Brush Ninja and Screencastify to Make Science Presentations

This week I had the opportunity to work in an eighth grade science class. I was there to help their teacher help them learn new ways to make presentations. The topic of their presentations was “forms of energy.” That topic lends itself to having students making illustrative animations. In this case I taught the students […]

More Halloween Science and Math Lessons

Last week I shared a handful of Halloween-themed math and science activities. PBS Learning Media also has a collection of Halloween-themed science and mathematics lessons. PBS Learning Media’s Halloween collection includes lessons that can be used in elementary school, middle school, and high school classrooms. One of the elementary school Halloween-themed lessons is all about […]

5 Science & Math Resources That Have a Halloween Theme

Now that we’re into October I’ll start to see a lot more searches for “Halloween” on this blog. Here’s a a handful of Halloween-themed math and science resources. SciShow Kids has a playlist of videos covering topics that are frequently connected to symbols of Halloween. Those topics are bats, spiders, skeletons, and the changing colors of […]

Seterra Offers Science Quiz Games

Disclosure: Seterra is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com A couple of weeks ago I featured Seterra’s hundreds of geography quiz games that are available in more than thirty languages. But geography isn’t the only subject that Seterra offers quiz games about. Seterra also offers games about human anatomy, plant cells, animal cells, and microscopes. Just […]

Frostbite Theater – 87 Science Experiment Video Lessons

Jefferson Lab’s YouTube channel includes a playlist titled Frostbite Theater. The first time I looked at the playlist a few years ago it had about fifty videos. The playlist has now expanded to 87 videos. The playlist features videos of science demonstrations and experiments. Many of the demonstrations involve the use of liquid nitrogen. You’ll also find […]

A Good Resource for Learning About the Science of Food

Foodskey is a site produced by The University of Nottingham who also produces the Periodic Table of Videos. Foodskey is a set of fourteen videos about the science of food. The videos cover topics like nutrition, food security, and crop technology. I’ve embedded the video about broccoli below. Applications for Education Foodskey isn’t terribly in-depth […]

Einstein’s Archives Online

More than 80,000 of Albert Einstein’s documents and drawings are now available to view for free at Einstein Archives Online. The archives include not only his scientific work but also his images and documents from his travels and thoughts on the world in general. Applications for Education The Einstein Archives Online has the potential to be […]

Three Lessons About Why Leaves Change Color

Every autumn people tour Maine just to see the leaves changing color. Seeing the leaves change is one of my favorite things about the fall too. Here are three good videos that explain why leaves change color in the fall. Untamed Science offers a good, partially animated, explanation of why leaves change colors, what produces the colors, and […]

Three Sites That Help Students Understand the Size of the Universe

Living in a relatively rural area that doesn’t have a lot of artificial light helps make it easy to spot constellations. Some nights when I take my dogs out before bedtime I look up at the constellations and I try to wrap my head around the size of the universe. Over the last few years […]

The Process of Plastic Bottle Recycling

I have t-shirts made from recycled plastic bottles and I bet that your students do too. How did those bottles become the material for t-shirts? Why didn’t the recycling company just make more bottles out of the recycled bottles? And why are those numbers on the bottom of the bottle important? Those questions and more […]

A Science Lesson for Dog Owners

As regular readers of this blog know, I love dogs. But as much as I love them there is one habit that I wish “man’s best friend” would kick. That habit is eating poop. Whether its from a deer, a moose, a horse, or any other mammal, my dogs have had time not scooping up […]

An Animated Shark Tracking Map – How Far Do Sharks Roam?

Years ago I included a shark tracking Google Earth layer in my workshop about Google Earth. It provided a good example of how Google Earth can be used in science classes. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find that file for a couple of years now and even if I did find the data is […]

Five Observations Students Can Record With Google’s Science Journal App

The new school year will be here soon and I haven’t taken a break all summer. I’m taking a short break from the Internet to go fishing at one of my favorite places in the world, Kennebago Lake. I’ll be back with new posts on Saturday. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the […]

Check Out NASA’s Interactive Guide to the Solar System

The new school year will be here soon and I haven’t taken a break all summer. I’m taking a short break from the Internet to go fishing at one of my favorite places in the world, Kennebago Lake. I’ll be back with new posts on Saturday. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the […]

How Does Air Conditioning Work? – A Lesson for the Dog Days of Summer

Here in northern New England we don’t handle hot and humid weather well. The first heat wave of the summer always sends people scrambling to buy the few air conditioners that are in stock at Home Depot or Walmart. In fact, I was one of those scramblers a couple of weeks ago. This leads me […]

Climate Kids’ Big Questions Teaches Students About Climate Change

NASA’s Climate Kids website has many excellent online and offline resources for teaching students about climate change. One of those resources is the Big Questions wheel. The Big Questions wheel guides students through the basic concepts and issues related to climate change. Seven big questions are featured in the wheel. Students select a question to […]

7 TED-Ed Food Science Lessons

Like many people, I probably drink more coffee and eat a few more carbs than I should. That combination can lead to some serious swings in my energy levels during the day. Caffeine and carbohydrates are just a couple of the topics covered in TED-Ed lessons about the science of food. Here are seven TED-Ed […]

A 360° Video That Shows You How to Find the Summer Constellations

NPR’s Skunk Bear YouTube channel has recently become one of my favorite YouTube channels. The latest video published on the channel is a 360° video that explains how to find the constellations that are visible in the summer night sky over North America. Because the video is a 360° video you can pan through the […]

Soft Fruit, Mold, and Sour Milk – A Lesson on Food Safety

At one time or another we’ve all opened a milk container and noticed that something wasn’t quite right or picked up a piece of fruit that was just a little too soft. Reactions, one of my favorite YouTube channels, has a video that answers whether or not you can eat that soft fruit, moldy bread, […]

Elementary School Rocks

K-5 GeoSource is a great resource produced by the American Geosciences Institute. On K-5 GeoSource you will find free lesson plans, science fair project ideas, links to virtual activities, and resources for professional development. The first time I looked at the site back in 2009 it had a distinct Web 1.0 feel. The site has improved of late to […]

Monster Heart Medic – A Game for Learning About Heart Health

Monster Heart Medic is a free iPad app produced by the Lawrence Hall of Science with funding from the National Institutes of Health. The purpose of the app is to help students learn about the cardiovascular system through a game environment. The basic premise of Monster Heart Medic is that students have to help a […]

Learn About Lake Ecosystems on DIY Lake Science

For the Fourth of July holiday I took my daughters to play at a little beach on a local lake. My older daughter enjoyed gathering snail and mussel shells in her bucket while my younger daughter enjoyed playing with some beach toys. The smell of the snail and mussel shells that my daughter collected reminded […]

4-H STEM Lab – A Good Place to Find Hands-on STEM Activities for K-12

The 4-H STEM Lab is a good place to find hands-on STEM activities for students of all ages. Activities in the 4-H STEM Lab are organized according to topic and grade level. The topics are alternative energy, chemistry, electricity, engineering, and physics. As is often the case with resources like this, some of the suggested activities […]

Videos for Learning About the Tour de France and the Science of Bicycling

The Tour de France begins on Saturday. What started out as a promotion to boost the sales of newspapers in France is now one of the biggest sporting events in the world (and a big business). On Tuesday I shared a couple of ideas for making virtual tours of the Tour de France. Here are some other […]

The Chemistry of Fireworks

Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States. Cities and towns all over the country will feature fireworks displays to celebrate the day. I’m sure that many of you will be enjoying a fireworks display tomorrow. (My kids are too young and my dogs too are too skittish to enjoy fireworks). If after watching a […]

5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Lessons

By the time that many of you read this, I’ll be fly fishing on one of my favorite rivers in Maine. Where I’m going there isn’t any cell phone reception. Even though there won’t be reception, I will still have my phone with me to take pictures. Sometimes I take pictures of fish that I […]

Why Sheep Don’t Shrink in the Rain

It’s a rainy day here in Maine and after a little trail run with my dogs, my feet were soaked! My Smartwool socks keep my feet relatively warm, but do nothing to keep them dry. This scenario always makes we wonder about two things. First, why don’t my Smartwool socks shrink when I wash and […]

What is a Storyboard? – History and Use Cases

Over the years I’ve written many blog posts about using storyboards in a variety of classroom settings. I’ve even hosted webinars on the topic. But until today I never wondered about the origins of storyboards. That changed when I read Aaron Sherman’s What is a Storyboard? In What is a Storyboard? Aaron Sherman, founder of […]

A Lesson for Beachcombers – How Seashells Are Made

If your summer plans include going to the beach, you may be interested in a new video from Reactions about how seashells are made. In How Seashells Are Made viewers learn that seashells are made of 95% calcium carbonate and 5% protein and sugar. The video doesn’t stop with just listing the components of seashells. […]

Two Lessons on Cloud Types and Their Names

Meteorology is a science topic that affects all of us whether you like it or not. Look up at the clouds and you’re making a science observation. But what exactly are you looking at when you look at the clouds? And what kind of clouds are you seeing? Those questions are answered in a National […]

4 Fun Summer Science Activities

Now that summer is here in the northern hemisphere it’s a great time to go outside for a science lesson. SciShow Kids has four suggestions for outdoor science lessons. In Fun Summer Science adults and children can learn about the science of bubbles, kites, ice cream, and solar energy. Each segment includes an explanation of […]

The Myth of the Giant’s Causeway Explained

The Giant’s Causeway is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites that I have had the privilege to see in person. It can be seen in Google Maps Street View too. It’s a unique geological site created by molten basalt. That’s interesting but not as interesting as the myth of its creation. The myth of […]

Short Lessons on the Longest Day of the Year

The summer solstice is just a couple of days away. Many refer to this as the “longest day of the year” when they really mean “longest period of daylight in a day.” But that’s beside the point of this post which is to share a few handy resources that can help kids understand the summer […]

10 Good Templates for Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts Lessons

Earlier this week I published a post about Read Write Think’s theme poem online activity. Obviously, that activity is a great fit for a language arts lesson. RWT is known for language arts interactive activities and templates. Dig a little deeper into RWT and you’ll find interactive activities, apps, and templates that can be used […]

Three Good Resources for Learning About the Science of Baseball

Watching a Red Sox game or listening to one on the radio is one of my favorite things to do on a warm summer night like we’re having tonight in Maine. During the pregame show this evening the broadcasters were talking about the launch angle of some of the homeruns hit by Red Sox players […]

Turning Milk Into Cheese – A Science Lesson

Reactions is a fantastic YouTube channel that science teachers should bookmark. Reactions is produced by PBS Digital Studios and the American Chemical Society. The purpose of the channel is to teach viewers about the role of chemistry in the things they may see in everyday life. For example, earlier this year they produced a video […]

Why Do We Itch? – A Science Lesson

Summer here in northern New England brings long and sunny days that make us forget about the short and frigid days of winter. Those sunny days come with a catch. That catch is blooming poison ivy and biting insects that make us itch. But what really makes us itch? Is there any way to avoid […]

Play Code Fred to Learn About Circulation and Respiration

Code Fred is a free online game developed by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. The game helps players learn about the human body’s responses to trauma. The object of the game is to help “Fred” escape from the woods while he is chased by a wolf. To keep Fred running players have to […]

The Science of Cookies

I love cookies! In fact, I just had two warm chocolate chip cookies for dessert tonight. I bet that you have a student or twenty that enjoys cookies too. TED-Ed has a fun lesson that you can use to teach some science concepts through cookies. In the TED-Ed lesson about the chemistry of cookies students learn why you […]

Glue vs. tape – A TED-Ed Science Lesson

The back windshield in my truck is currently being held in place by some clear packaging tape. There’s a big crack in it and my local glass shop can’t fix it until Tuesday. Tape was my “fix” because super glue would not only make a mess, but that mess could end up dripping onto the […]

Watch Live – Bison Calves in Yellowstone

A few minutes ago I was browsing Facebook when I noticed that the Yellowstone National Park page was livestreaming images of bison and their new calves. You can view the stream here right now. If you’re not able to view the stream because of restrictions on your school filters or you want more information about […]

TED-Ed Lessons About Every Element on the Periodic Table

For years I have referred readers to the University of Nottingham’s Periodic Table of Videos. That table provides a video about every element that is in the Periodic Table. Recently, via Lifehacker, I learned that the producers of the Periodic Table of Videos partnered with TED-Ed to create lessons about every element in the Periodic […]

Hurricane Webinar 2018!

Thanks to a teacher at Sigsbee Charter School in Key West I learned about a free webinar for fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students. The webinar is the 2018 Hurricane Webinar hosted by Hurricanes: Science and Society team in partnership with the NOAA National Hurricane Center and the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center. The goal of […]

Inspiration From an App That Didn’t Work as Expected

In preparation for a webinar that I am hosting on Thursday I tested a new app that is supposed to help users identify trees. The app is called FindATree. The concept behind the app is solid, but the execution is lacking. The app has you answer a few questions about the characteristics of the tree […]

Record and Share Observations of Nature on iNaturalist

iNaturalist is a community website for sharing pictures and observations of plants and animals. To enable easy sharing of observations, iNaturalist offers a free Android app and a free iOS app. Using the apps you can take a picture, geo-locate it, write your observations, and upload to the iNaturalist community. If your observation is incomplete, for example if you’re […]

Dig Into Mining – Virtual Field Labs and Field Trips About Copper Mining

Dig Into Mining is a free resource from Discovery Education and Freeport-McMoran (the world’s largest copper mining company). The purpose of Dig Into Mining is to help students understand how copper is mined and processed for use in products like pipes and wires. Dig Into Mining offers seven virtual labs and virtual tours that Discovery […]

PhET PowerPoint Add-in – Add Science & Math Simulations to Slides

PhET is a free resource that has been popular with science and math teachers for many years. PhET provides free interactive math and science simulations covering topics in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. In the PhET library you’ll find simulations appropriate for elementary, middle, high school, and university students. PhET even offers a […]

Animated Map of First Foliage Appearances

Last Friday I was in Greenwich, Connecticut to give a presentation. Greenwich is roughly 300 miles south of my home in Maine. Greenwich was in full spring bloom with green grass and foliage starting to bud on the trees. Meanwhile back home in Maine my yard was covered in snow. In making that drive I […]

DIY Solar Updraft Tower – A Hands-on Elementary Science Lesson

SciShow Kids has a playlist of videos titled Super Simple Machines. The videos in that playlist feature explanations and demonstrations of simple machines that students could make in your classroom. One of those videos is Spin a Wheel With Sunlight. By watching Spin a Wheel With Sunlight students can learn how solar energy can be […]

JuxtaposeJS – Create Side-by-Side Comparison Frames

JuxtaposeJS is a free tool for making and hosting side-by-side comparisons of images. The tool was designed to help people see before and after views of a location, a building, a person, or anything else that changes appearance over time. JuxtaposeJS will let you put the images into a slider frame that you can embed […]

Dimensions – An Academic Research Engine

When it comes to searching for research studies and other academic articles many people turn to Google Scholar. But as your friendly librarian will tell you, there are still other databases that you should try. Dimensions is one such example of that. Dimensions is a search engine focused on helping users discover research publications including […]

What Causes Body Odor? – A TED-Ed Lesson

What Causes Body Odor? is a new TED-Ed lesson that every middle school health teacher will want to bookmark. The lesson explains where body odor comes from, the processes that and contribute to body odor, and how antiperspirants work. What Causes Body Odor? is part of TED-Ed playlist called Gross Science. Gross Science includes video […]

Three Earth Day Resources

Earth Day is coming up in a few weeks. Here are a few resources that you might consider incorporating into your Earth Day lesson plans. I’ll be sharing more resources later this week. Google offers tours in its Explore Climate Change series. The tours explore the actions of organizations to prevent or adapt to climate change in […]

This Periodic Table Shows Elements By Country and Date of Discovery

On Tuesday morning I shared a collection of seven good resources to help students learn the Periodic Table of Elements. The next day Open Culture shared this periodic table visualization that shows the country and year in which each element was discovered. The Periodic Table by country and date of discovery (If you cannot see […]

Seven Good Resources to Help Students Learn the Periodic Table

Learning the periodic table of the elements is not one of my fondest memories of high school, but it was a necessary experience to get through chemistry. My classmates and I memorized  all of the elements, at least temporarily, by using flashcards to drill each other. Today, students have more options at their disposal. Here are […]

This TED-Ed Lesson Is Full of …!

Why Isn’t the World Covered In Poop? is the latest video lesson published by TED-Ed. With a title like that, how could you not be curious enough to spend five minutes watching the video? And that’s exactly what I just did. Why Isn’t the World Covered In Poop? is really a lesson about dung beetles […]

This Looks Like a Great Hands-on PD Experience

FireWorks is an educational program, sponsored in part by the U.S. Forest Service, designed to teach students about the science of wildfires. This morning I received an email about a free two day professional development workshop centered around the FireWorks educational curriculum. The hands-on workshop is in Missoula, Montana this June. It appears to be […]

Making and Understanding Paper Airplanes

Making and Understanding Paper Planes is a short video that was produced by students for Next Vista’s Creative Flight video contest. Like a lot of the videos hosted on Next Vista, this video is a good example of students producing a video to teach a short lesson. In the video the students demonstrate how to […]

5 TED-Ed Lessons About How the Food We Eat Affects Our Bodies

This morning while my daughter was napping I went down the rabbit hole of YouTube related videos. It started out as a simple search for some new cycling workout videos and ended up with this TED-Ed lesson about carbohydrates. That lesson goes nicely with some other TED-Ed lessons that I have bookmarked about how the […]

A Hands-on Science Lesson for the Spring

When I was in Kindergarten we grew marigolds in Styrofoam cups and took them home in spring (probably for Mother’s Day, but my mother will have to confirm that detail). I was reminded of that little project when I watched a new SciShow Kids video. Earlier today SciShow Kids published a video titled Grow Your […]

How Do Trees Survive Winter

It has been a long, cold winter here in Maine. Some of the snow storms have taken their toll on the trees including the one that had my daughter’s swing in it. But many trees are making it through the winter just fine. It makes you wonder why some trees survive the winter and others […]

Take a Look at This Year’s Explore.org Wildlife Cams

Explore.org offers a fantastic collection of live nature webcam feeds. In the gallery of live webcams you will find video feeds featuring owls in their nests, ospreys in their nests, and bald eagles in nests, and video feeds featuring puffins. Spring is almost here in the northern hemisphere and the bird videos feeds are the best […]

The Metamorphosis of Butterflies

My oldest daughter’s favorite book right now is The Very Hungry Caterpillar (she’s a toddler so this is subject to change in three minutes). That’s why I was recently drawn to a TED-Ed lesson titled The Weird and Wonderful Metamorphosis of the Butterfly. The lesson teaches students the stages of a butterfly’s life cycle, why […]

Flowers of North America

Project Noah is a globally collaborative project to which anyone can contribute. On Project Noah you can share pictures and stories of the plants and the animals that you observe in your neighborhood. Project Noah has a section titled Missions in which you can find projects that you can contribute to. The Missions ask people to make contributions […]

Squirrels!!! Why Are You Digging In My Lawn?

Along with the birds returning my yard, the squirrels and chipmunks are starting to dig around in my lawn. The same thing might be happening in your students’ yards too. SciShow Kids has a new video that explains why squirrels are dormant for much of the winter and why they dig in the spring and […]

The Role of Bird Migration in the Ecosystem

When I let my dogs out this morning I heard some birds chirping that I hadn’t heard in a few months. That’s a sure sign that spring can’t be too far away. The sounds of the birds this morning reminded me of a TED-Ed lesson that was published a few years ago. Bird Migration, A […]

Ten Ideas for Classroom Podcasts

On Sunday I published a video that shows how quickly and easily you can create a podcast on Anchor.fm. If you watched the video and you’re ready to get started, your next step is probably to generate ideas for your classroom podcast. Here are ten ideas that I brainstormed to help you and your students […]

Aquation – A Game for Learning About Global Access to Clean Water

Aquation is a free game offered by the the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The game, designed for students in upper elementary school or middle school, teaches students about the distribution of clean water and what can be done to balance global water resources. In the game students select a region to explore its current water […]

Truss Me – Design and Test Weight-bearing Structures

Truss Me is an app that students can use to design and test simple weight-bearing structures. Truss Me can be used in “challenge” mode or in “free play” mode. The challenge mode contains fifteen activities in which students are awarded points for strength and efficiency of their structures. For example, if a structure holds the […]

Rocket Science 101 – Build and Launch Virtual Rockets

Update, January 2021: This app is no longer available.  Rocket Science 101 is a free app offered by NASA that helps students understand how rockets work. The app also helps students understand the differences between the four types of rockets most frequently used by NASA. In Rocket Science 101 students can build all four rockets in […]

Ptable – Interactive Periodic Table of Elements

There are lots of websites offering interactive or dynamic periodic tables. One that has been around for many years now is Ptable. Ptable is an interactive display of the Periodic Table of Elements. Place your mouse pointer over an element to access the basic information about it. Click on an element to open a Wikipedia article about […]

The Chemistry of Contrails

Earlier this week I was ice fishing on a lake in northern Maine that just happens to be under the flight path of many airplanes going to and returning from Europe. Being a bit of an aviation geek, I enjoyed guessing at the model of the planes overhead. I could quickly identify 747s, A380s, and […]

How Birds Learn to Sing

Spring isn’t too far away and soon we’ll start to see and hear the songs of more birds around my home here in Maine. If you also live in a cold, northern climate the sounds of the birds is a welcome sign of spring. Why do birds sing? And how do they learn the songs […]

If You Teach Science, You Need Science Netlinks

Science Netlinks offers dozens of lesson plans and online learning activities. The lessons and activities are cover a wide variety of science topics. All of the lesson plans are sorted by grade level, but you can also sort the lesson plans by science benchmark standards. A series of icons also indicates if each lesson plan has […]

Webinar Recording – Inquiry and the Fire Lab

On Monday I hosted a free webinar sponsored by Underwriters Laboratories Xplorlabs. The webinar focused on the ideas of inquiry-based learning and how they are applied to Xplorlabs’s Fire Forensics: Claims and Evidence online learning experience. If you missed the webinar, you can view the recording as embedded below. Inquiry-based Learning and the Fire Lab from Richard […]

NASA Kids’ Club – Fun Games for Learning About Space

NASA Kids’ Club is a collection games, interactive activities, and images for students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. At the center of the NASA Kids’ Club is a set of games and interactive activities arranged on five skill levels. The activities range from simple things like guessing numbers in “Airplane High Low” to more difficult […]

Free Webinar – Inquiry-based Learning and the Fire Lab

Join on Monday at 3pm EST for a free webinar about inquiry-based learning. The webinar, sponsored by Xplorlabs by Underwriters Laboratories, will feature strategies for using inquiry-based learning, the role of the teacher in inquiry-based learning, and research on the benefits of inquiry-based learning. We’ll take a look at how Xplorlabs’s Fire Forensics: Claims and […]

Fun, Hands-on Science Lessons

Science Snacks is a resource that I referenced in my list of ten blog post topics for your school blog. Science Snacks is a resource that provides ideas and directions for hands-on science lessons. Science Snacks features activities that can be conducted with inexpensive and readily available materials. Each Science Snack comes with a materials […]

The Chemistry of Gluten

My local grocery store has a whole section of gluten-free bread. I’d wager that your local grocery store has the same. What is gluten? What’s its role in your favorite loaf of bread? Those questions and more are answered in a recently released Reactions video titled The Only Video You’ll Ever Need to Watch About […]

A Large Collection of Virtual Chemistry Labs and Lessons

I didn’t plan for this to become “science week” on Free Technology for Teachers, it has just worked out that I have a backlog of good science resources to share. Chem Collective is another good science resource. Chem Collective is a project designed and maintained by Carnegie Mellon University’s chemistry department and the National Science Digital […]

Play and Learn Science – An App for Students and Their Parents

Play and Learn Science is a free app (Android and iOS versions available) designed for kids to learn science concepts. Not only that, the app is designed to help parents help their kids learn science concepts. Play and Learn Science has four sections for kids. Each of those sections contains three activities related to science […]

How Snow Is Made Naturally and by Humans

Every skier knows that natural snow is better than man-made snow. But there will be plenty of both at the Winter Olympics. So what is the difference? And how is snow made? Those questions are answered in the following videos. How to Make Snow (If You’re Not Elsa) is a short video produced by SciShow […]

10 More Videos About the Science of the Winter Olympics

On Tuesday I shared a playlist of 16 videos about the science of the Winter Olympics. Those videos were created by the National Science Foundation to coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympics. In 2014 the NSF released another batch of videos about the science of the Winter Olympics. Some of the things that viewers can […]

Making North America – Interactive Map Quiz

Making North America is a NOVA production that chronicles the geological formation of North America. You can watch the series online to learn about the natural forces that shaped the landscape of North America. As a complementary resource for classrooms, NOVA offers an interactive map that features unique geological features of North America. Making North […]

16 Videos About the Science of Winter Olympics Sports

The Winter Olympics begin this week. I’m looking forward to the skiing events and the bobsled events. The start of the Winter Olympics presents an opportunity to incorporate some science lessons into your students’ interest in a current event that they may be following at home. The National Science Foundation offers a YouTube playlist of […]

Five Good Educational Resources to Use Before the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is this coming Sunday. Just like last year, I predict that the Patriots will win. The odds are good that you have some students who are also interested in the game. Try one of the following resources to turn your students’ enthusiasm for the Super Bowl into a fun lesson. The Superb […]

Cold and Flu Season Lessons

As anyone who has been in a webinar with me in the last week can confirm, I’ve been fighting a cold. Like a lot of people, I seem to get a cold or the flu around this time every year. Fortunately, it’s just a cold and not the flu. But what’s the difference between the […]

Patches – Create Your Own Virtual Reality Environments

In the past I’ve featured Google’s Cardboard Camera and Street View apps as tools for creating simple virtual reality imagery. Those tools are great if you want to capture immersive images of physical environments and share those images with others. But if you want to create completely drawn and animated virtual reality scenes, then you’ll […]

Science Friday – Audio Science Lessons

Science Friday is a weekly podcast (hosted on Sound Cloud) that features science stories spanning a wide array of topics, but most topics that are related to current news stories. As the name implies, new episodes appear on Fridays. You can listen to each episode in its entirety or you can choose to listen to […]

Project Feeder Watch – Contribute to Tracking Bird Migrations

Project Feeder Watch is a public project administered by the Cornell Ornithology Lab and Bird Studies Canada. Project Feeder Watch collects data from backyard bird observers across the United States and Canada. Data is collected from November through April. The data collected is used for a variety of purposes including providing the public with information about the birds that […]

USGS Multimedia Gallery – Excellent Public Domain Images and Videos

Today, I want to make sure that you’re aware of some other great materials available through the USGS Multimedia Gallery. The USGS Multimedia Gallery contains large collections of educational videos, animations, podcasts, and image galleries. You can search each collection by topic, keyword tag, or year of creation. RSS feeds are available for each gallery. In addition to […]

Videos and Google Earth File for Learning About Glaciers

SciShow Kids recently published a new video that explains to children how glaciers are formed and how they change over time. SciShow Kids is intended for early elementary school grades and this video about glaciers not an exception to that pattern. For older students you might want to take a look at How Do Glaciers […]

12 Free Lessons About Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms

Scholastic has a nice resource called StudyJams that contains short videos, slideshows, and quizzes about a variety of topics commonly taught in elementary school classrooms. Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms is one of the topics covered in a unit of twelve StudyJams. The Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms StudyJams include videos, slideshows, and short quizzes. Some of […]

The Periodic Table in Pictures and Words – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in July. The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures […]

5 Observations Students Can Record With Google’s Science Journal App

Google’s Science Journal app provides some neat tools for recording data and writing observations. Within the app students create notebooks for recording experiment data and observations. Students can also use those notebooks to simply organize observations by topic. There are sensors built into the app for recording sound, speed, light, direction, and magnetism. Here are […]

The Shortest Day of the Year

Good morning from chilly Paris Hill, Maine where my thermometer reads 11F, but it feels more like 0F. Not only is it going to be cold all day, it’s also going to be the day that we have the least sunlight all year. That is because today is the winter solstice. Here’s a small collection […]

Fun & Educational Activities In the Snow

We have just had our second snowstorm of the year here in Maine. It is around this time every year that I share some educational activities that you and your students can do in the snow. Some of these activities have connections with math and physics concepts. NOVA, as a part of their program on […]

The Physics of Skiing

It’s a snow day here in western Maine. For a skier like me, that means it’s time to enjoy the snow with some time on the slopes. If you live in an area that has skiing, you might have some students that feel the same way that I do about snow. New snow equals a […]

The Science of Snowflakes

Here in western Maine we’re expecting our second real snowstorm of the winter to arrive tonight. This has reminded me of a couple of educational videos that explain the science of snowflakes. The Science of Snowflakes is a TED-Ed video lesson that explains how snowflakes are formed, why they’re all different, and why seem to […]

Chemistry in Slow Motion

The Periodic Table of Videos produced by The University of Nottingham features a video demonstration of the characteristics of each element in the Periodic Table of Elements. Each element in the Periodic Table displayed on the home page is linked to a corresponding YouTube video. The Periodic Table of Videos YouTube channel contains some additional features that teachers […]

Smithsonian Learning Lab Announces Most Popular Resources of 2017

The Smithsonian Learning Lab is a great tool for organizing collections of resources available through the Smithsonian. Through the Learning Lab you can search for and then gather together documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans. This playlist of videos will show you everything that you need to know in order to use the […]

The Sounds of Nature Around the World

Nature Sound Map provides a wonderful way to explore the soundscape of the natural world. On the Nature Sound Map you will find placemarks containing recordings of nature. The recordings have been added to the project by professional sound recordists. Some of the recordings you will find feature the sounds of just one animal, the […]

EquatIO is Now Free for Teachers

EquatIO is a popular tool that math and science teachers like to use for using handwriting, equation and formula prediction, and graphing in Google Forms, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings. The service is provided by TextHelp who also makes the popular Read & Write add-on for Google Docs. This afternoon TextHelp announced that EquatIO is now […]

A Fun Game About Ecosystems

Feed the Dingo is a fun game that teaches students about the importance of maintaining balanced ecosystems. In the game students have to build and maintain a desert ecosystem. The game begins with a blank slate to which students have to add plants and animals. The game plays out over twelve virtual days. Each day […]

A Health and Science Lesson – What Is Fat?

Now that we’re into the holiday season, many of us may be concerned about our intake of fats through our favorite holiday treats. But, as students can learn in What is Fat? not all fats are the same. What is Fat? is a TED-Ed lesson that explores the differences between the types of fats that we find […]

Science Journal App from Google

The Google Science Journal is a digital science notebook that provides users with one location to store notes, photos, and observations. It works with Android devices, iPhones, iPads, and Chromebooks. The Google Science Journal allows users to conduct experiments involving light, motion, sound, and air pressure using sensors that are already built into the phone. External […]

5 Ways to Use Comic Creation in Elementary School Classrooms

This is a guest post from Stephanie Krisulevicz.  For the last few years I’ve been using cartoons in my classroom to assess my students knowledge. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Yeah, yeah, my principal would think I’ve lost my mind letting them play like that.” Don’t discredit the idea just yet! I’ve found that it’s quite […]

National Mole Day

Mole Day was first celebrated in 1991 by a group of chemistry teachers who wanted to encourage students to see that chemistry is interesting and fun and possibly even consider a career in this field. Mole Day is celebrated from 6:02am to 6:02pm on October 23 to commemorate Avogadro’s Number, a basic measuring unit in chemistry. […]

Virtual and Interactive Resources for Science Teachers

Virtual labs have come a long way in recent years. While nothing compares to completing a hands-on lab in an actual science classroom, sometimes it isn’t possible. Cost and access to equipment are possible obstacles. Other barriers include location. As more classes are being offered online, it necessary for students to complete activities in virtual […]

Big History Project

The Big History Project is a free, online social studies course for middle and high school students. It can be taught over the course of a semester or an entire year. Teachers can use the teacher-generated lessons, which are aligned with the Common Core, or they can create their own using the content library. The Big […]

How Deep Is the Ocean? – This Video Puts It Into Perspective

Understanding the scale of something like depth of the ocean or distance to the moon is best done with visuals that are familiar to students. That’s why I am excited to share this video from Tech Insider about the depth of the ocean. It does a great job of helping viewers understand the depths of […]

Cooking In a Solar Oven – A Hands-on Science Project

Update June 2022: This resource is no longer available.  I have been watching a lot of Top Chef re-runs on Hulu lately. In one of the episodes that I watched last week all of the chefs had to cook with a solar oven or a solar stove. Watching that episode reminded me of the solar […]

Front Row Offers New Science Units for the New School Year

Earlier this summer I featured Front Row’s updated social studies units that complemented their existing language arts units. Over the summer Front Row expanded their offerings to include ten science units. Like all Front Row offerings within the new science units you will find multiple versions of the same article to distribute to your students. […]

Why Do Dogs Tilt Their Heads? Why Do They Pant?

My old dog Morrison used to tilt is head to his right whenever I would ask him if he wanted to play stick. He wasn’t the only dog to do this. Perhaps you or one of your students have a dog that does the same. If you’ve ever wondered why dogs tilt their heads in […]

Kids Discover Online Offers Great Concept Maps

Kids Discover Online offers excellent reference articles for elementary school and middle school students. All of the articles are offered in multiple versions to match a range of Lexile scores. But that is not all that Kids Discover Online offers. My favorite feature of Kids Discover Online is the concept maps that students can explore. […]

One More Round-up of Solar Eclipse Resources

Throughout the last month I have shared some resources for teaching and learning about the solar eclipse that is passing over the United States this coming Monday. Here’s one last round-up of resources related to the solar eclipse. The Solar Eclipse Computer is a free tool from the Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval […]

How Do Glaciers Move?

Five years ago my old pal Morrison (RIP) and I traveled down the Columbia Icefields Parkway. It was a great way to experience part of the Canadian Rockies including seeing the glaciers that melt and feed tributaries of rivers that will eventually reach the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans. That begged the questions of how […]

Free Solar Eclipse Glasses in Your Community

In 15 days a solar eclipse will cover a large portion of the United States. Star Net, a production of Space Science Institute’s National Center for Interactive Learning, has partnered with American Library Association, the Lunar and Planetary Institute, and the Afterschool Alliance to provide more than 2 million free eclipse glasses to public libraries […]

Three Good Videos About Solar Eclipses

On August 21st a solar eclipse will cover a large portion of the United States. If you’re in an area that the eclipse will cover, you may want to have your students build solar eclipse viewing boxes. But before doing that, you may want to have your students review how eclipses happen. The following three […]

A Virtual Amusement Park About Molecules

The NanoSpace Molecularium is a nice web resource produced by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The purpose of the site is to provide elementary school and middle school students with an introduction to the properties of atoms and molecules. The NanoSpace Molecularium is a virtual amusement park that students can click through to find videos, games, and […]

Learn About the Sounds of Nature on Wild Music

Wild Music is a fun and educational website on which students can learn about sounds commonly heard in nature. On Wild Music students can listen to the sounds of nature and explore what creates those sounds. Some of the activities students will find include a game of animal audio memory in which students hear sounds […]

In Case You Missed It – The Periodic Table in Pictures and Words

One of the most popular posts of the month so far featured The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures and Words. In case you missed it, here’s a video I made to provide an overview of the site. Applications for Education As I mentioned last week, The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures and Words could be a […]

The Periodic Table in Pictures and Words

The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures and Words is an interactive site that shows students how each element is used or is present in familiar products. When students click on an element in the interactive display an image of a familiar product or object appears along with a description of the element and its […]

Dave Vernier’s Eclipse Tips

On Monday at ISTE 17 I met with a representative of Vernier Software & Technology. They’re producing some neat equipment for science classrooms as well as some excellent interactive physics videos. Those resources are not free to use, but they do have an excellent collection of free resources about the total eclipse happening in the […]

A Good App and A Good Site for Learning About Endangered Animals

WWF Together is a beautiful iPad app and Android app that features interactive stories about endangered animals around the world. Each of the interactive stories includes beautiful images and videos, facts about the animals and their habitats, and the threats to each of the animals. Some of the animals currently featured in the app are pandas, marine […]

CK-12 BrainFlex Can Help Kids Keep Their Math & Science Skills Sharp This Summer

For the third summer in a row the CK-12 Foundation is hosting the CK-12 Brainflex Summer Challenge. The challenge is a free program that students can use to keep their math and science skills sharp through the summer while also learning some new knowledge and gaining new skills. Students register for the program and then track […]

4 Virtual Reality Videos About Antarctica

Virtual reality is giving many of us the opportunity to see places that we may never visit in a level of detail that could never be experienced through print or even 2D video. For example, thanks to The New York Times VR app (available for iOS and Android) we can now experience parts of Antarctica […]

7 Lessons About Electricity – From the Archive

Due to an injury and some pressing personal matters requiring my attention, posts for the rest of week will be some favorites from the archives of the blog. One of my most memorable elementary school science lessons included all of us creating working circuits with multiple switches to illuminate light bulbs. Our power source was […]

How the Human Body Processes Medicine

As some of you may have seen on Instagram, I injured my right hand on Friday evening. After looking at the cuts on my hand, the emergency room doctor prescribed a round of antibiotics and a mild pain reliever. So it was with some extra interest that I watched a new TED-Ed lesson titled How […]

7 Good Resources for Learning About Mount Everest

Next week many mountaineers will be making their summit attempts on Mount Everest. As long-time readers of this blog may recall, one of my bucket list items is seeing Mount Everest in person. Until then I have to entertain myself with books, videos, and imagery of the mountain. Here are some of the resources that […]

How the Popsicle Was Invented – A Tasty TED-Ed Lesson

How the Popsicle Was Invented is the title of a recently released TED-Ed video. The short video explains the origin of the tasty treat itself as well as the name “Popsicle.” This TED-Ed lesson doesn’t include any multiple choice or discussion questions. It’s just a fun little lesson for students to think about as the […]

5 Resources for Learning About Aviation – How Airplanes Fly

Today at the WWII Museum in New Orleans I took a bunch of pictures of My Gal Sal including some 3D images that I’ll use in VR headsets. Looking at My Gal Sal and some of the other planes in the museum was a treat for someone like me who is fascinated by aviation. When […]

Kitchen Science – Let’s Make Butter

SciShow Kids recently released a new video titled Let’s Make Butter. The video provides directions for making butter in your kitchen then goes on to explain the science of what happens in the process of making butter. Applications for Education Rainy days like the one we’re having here in Maine are perfect for kitchen science […]

More Than 400 Science Animations

Learners TV, like many similar sites on the Internet, offers an index of math and science video lessons. What makes Learners TV a little different is that it also has an index of more than 400 science concept animations. The science animations on Learners TV are organized into three categories; biology, physics, and chemistry. Please not that […]

Understanding the Science of Baseball

Baseball, my favorite professional team sport, is back in season. And soon Little League baseball will be starting again too. If you have elementary school students who are interested in America’s National Pastime, take a look at Exploratorium’s the Science of Baseball. The Science of Baseball is a bit dated in its looks, but it still […]

The PeriodicTable of Videos – An Update from the Archive

Earlier this week an email from a reader prompted me to take a look back through my archives for chemistry-related resources. The Periodic Table of Videos is one that popped-up that I hadn’t thought about in years. In fact, it has been nine years since I wrote about it. In that time a lot of […]

Plum’s Creaturizer – A Neat AR App to Get Kids Exploring Outdoors

Creaturizer from PBS Kids is a free iOS and Android app that lets students create fun cartoon creatures then place them into outdoor settings through the use of augmented reality. In the app students create cartoon creatures by swiping and tapping on the features they want their creatures to have (students can have multiple creature […]

See California’s Redwoods in Google Street View

In an earlier post I shared the Google Expeditions virtual tours of national parks. Shortly after publishing that post I discovered Google’s latest additions to their Street View collections. The latest addition features Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California. This imagery lets viewers virtually experience some of the size and scale of California’s redwood […]

7 Good Resources for Teaching and Learning About Earth Day

Each of the last two mornings I’ve been inundated with spammy press releases pitching all manner of websites and products related to Earth Day. The upside of seeing all of those press releases is that it got me to look for some of the better resources for teaching and learning about Earth Day. Here are […]

An Interactive Mural of Birds

This afternoon while walking my dog, Max, I saw the first ducks of spring paddling around a small opening in the ice on a local pond. This reminded me of a neat resource from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The Wall of Birds is an interactive mural of bird drawings. Clicking on a drawing will […]

Put a Planetarium In Your Web Browser

Planetarium by Neave Interactive is a website on which you can specify your current location and it will show you a map of the night sky based upon your location and the date. You can also use Planetarium without specifying your location and instead explore the night sky from any place on Earth. For Google Chrome […]

Spring Forward! – Lessons on Daylight Saving Time

Most of us in North America moved our clocks forward by one hour last night or this morning. In doing so we will feel like or may actually have lost an hour of sleep. This is what happens every year when you live in a place that uses Daylight Saving Time. Your students may come […]

Duolingo Tinycards – Quick Review Activities

Tinycards is a free service from Duolingo that provides quick review activities in your web browser or on your iPad. Tinycards are essentially multimedia flashcards with a few quiz questions interspersed between them. The idea being that students will flip through a few digital flashcards then answer a question or two to test their recall […]

Games@NOAA – A Gallery of Educational Games About Oceans and Weather

NOAA’s Games Planet Arcade offers twenty-six educational games for young students. The games are intended to help students learn about oceans, wildlife, and weather. Twenty of the games address topics related to marine life. While the games are not terribly complex or fancy, they do offer some solid information for young students. For example, the Humpback Whale […]

How to Make a Terrarium

Build a Tiny Plant World! is the title of a new SciShow Kids video. The video explains how plants stay alive inside of terrariums and what you need to create your own plant terrarium. The video does a good job of explaining what students will need to create a terrarium and the elements within the […]

Valentine’s Day Math, Science, and Philosophy Lessons

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Whether you buy into the “holiday” or not, your students probably do. Here are three short video lessons related to Valentine’s Day. The following video from It’s Okay To Be Smart (produced by PBS Digital Studios) explains why humans kiss, the history of symbols associated with kissing, and some cultural views […]

View Animals and Their Ranges Through WWF Apps

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) offers a neat app and corresponding website for learning about animals around the world. The WWF Together app (available for iPad and some Android devices) features interactive stories about endangered animals around the world. Each of the interactive stories includes beautiful images and videos, facts about the animals and their […]

#ColorOurCollections – Free Coloring Pages from Museums and Libraries

The New York Academy of Medicine is currently hosting the #ColorOurCollections campaign. The campaign makes coloring pages and books available to download for free. The collection is comprised of drawings from 41 libraries and museums around the world. All of these black and white drawings can be downloaded and printed for free. The drawings contain […]

The Superb Owl – A Science Lesson With a Super Bowl Theme

Earlier this week I shared a few Super Bowl-themed lesson ideas. Here’s one more to close out the week before the Super Bowl. The Superb Owl is a cute video about owls. The video presents interesting facts about four types of owls. The whole four minute video is presented as if it is an NFL […]

Articles and Lessons About Weather – From ReadWorks

ReadWorks is a great service that provides lesson plans designed around nonfiction and fiction articles. All of the articles provided by ReadWorks are labeled with a suggested grade level and a Lexile score. The ReadWorks Digital classroom service provides teachers with a free way to distribute assignments and monitor students’ progress. Learn more about ReadWorks […]

5 Good Elementary School Activities from the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian offers wonderful online resources for students of all ages. The Smithsonian’s Learning Lab lets teachers create collections of resources. But you don’t have to use the Learning Lab to use many of the activities available through the various Smithsonian channels. Here are five good online activities available through the Smithsonian. These are activities […]

The Climate Time Machine

Crafting my previous post about 40 years of snow data reminded me of a neat climate change demonstration for kids. NASA’s Climate Time Machine is one of many activities that students can complete on NASA’s Climate Kids website. The Climate Time Machine is essentially an interactive timeline that lets students see the changes in the […]

40 Years of Snow Data

The Snow Guardian is an interesting short film featured on National Geographic’s YouTube channel. The film features billy barr (he chooses not to capitalize his name) who has lived alone on Gothic Mountain in Colorado for more than 40 years. For all but one of those years he has kept detailed, daily records of the […]

Use Google Maps to Tell a Story Within a Story

Google’s My Maps platform lets anyone who has a Google Account create their own multimedia maps. One of my favorite features within the My Maps platform is the option to create a slideshow of images and videos within a placemark. By using that feature you can tell a story within a story. In My Maps […]

A Short Lesson About the Great Lakes

In the fall of 2012 I crisscrossed my way across Michigan’s upper peninsula. In doing so I was able to experience some of the magnitude of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron. I was along the shore of Lake Superior during a storm that created waves the size of those we see on Maine’s […]

Everything CK-12 – Open Resources and More

The CK-12 Foundation provides teachers and students with some excellent resources including Flexbooks, study guides, interactive math and science simulations, and even an online whiteboard platform. This Wednesday CK-12 is hosting a free webinar about all of the open resources that they offer. In the webinar you will learn how to locate, save, and share […]

How Igloos Can Keep You Warm – And Winter Phys Ed Activities

How an Igloo Keeps You Warm is a new video from It’s Okay To Be Smart. The video does a great job of explaining how an igloo provides insulation and stays relatively warm when people are inside it. The video also explains the engineering concepts used in the creation of a strong and warm igloo. […]

Why We Feel Attached to Our Stuff – A TED-Ed Lesson

A few years ago I realized that somewhere along the line I started to collect coffee mugs. I never set out to collect coffee mugs, it just kind of happened. Now I have a few favorite mugs that I won’t part with even as I start packing my house (I sold it last month) and […]

Quick Lessons About the Winter Solstice

The winter solstice is today in the northern hemisphere. Should you need some short explanations of solstices to share with your children or students, take a look at the following resources. On National Geographic’s Education page you will find this hands-on activity designed to help students understand the changes in intensity and duration of sunlight on their […]

How Trees Survive The Winter

It was a crisp -10F at my house this morning. When it’s that cold everything seems crisp, brittle, and well…frozen. It makes you wonder how anything survives for long outside. I know that I’m always amazed when my lilac and blueberry bushes bounce back to life every spring. How do they do that? The answer […]

Brrr…Lessons on Winter Weather

The weather forecast for my town calls for a temperature of -5F and a wind chill of -33F tonight. I’ll be bundling up when my dogs need to go out tonight. The cold forecast made me think about some resources for teaching lessons about winter weather. The following video explains how wind chill is calculated. […]

Snot, Poop, Puke, and the Lessons They Teach

This post was inspired by my daughter whose snot, poop, and puke have been on me at various points in the last few days. Who Pooped? is one of the most Pinned resources of all time on this blog. Who Pooped? is an interactive site in which students learn about various animals by guessing which animal created […]

OpenEd Adds Thousands of New Science Resources

OpenEd offers a massive library of free educational games, videos, practice assessments, and tutorials. This week they expanded their catalog by adding more than 1,000 new resources aligned to Next Generation Science Standards. These resources come from notable content producers including SciShow, CrashCourse, and Minute Physics all of which have been featured many times on […]

Geosciences Bridge – A NOAA Internship for High School Students

Geosciences Bridge is an internship opportunity for high school seniors who are interested in pursuing careers in geosciences. The six week program is hosted at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore. Students receive college credits and stipends in addition to having all expenses paid. The Geosciences Bridge internship gives students the opportunity to learn about […]

Reach Out Reporter – Science News for Children

Reach Out Reporter is a free service that provides science stories for elementary school students. The site is updated weekly with videos, articles, and graphics. There is a section in Reach Out Reporter called Fact Pack. In the fact pack section you will find sets of short videos and or images arranged around a central […]

What Are Owl Pellets? – Learn by Watching and Doing

One of the cool things about living where I do, essentially the middle of nowhere by most standards, is getting to see lots of cool wildlife on a regular basis. That includes occasionally seeing owls when I’m walking my dogs at dawn and dusk. With owls come owl pellets that are fun to pick up […]

193 Short Timelapse Videos of Our Changing World

On Tuesday Google announced the publication of new Google Earth timelapse imagery. The new imagery shows the how the physical geography of the Earth has changed over the last 32 years. You can see this imagery on the Google Earth Engine website or you can view it as a series of 193 short videos on […]

7 Lessons About Electricity

One of my most memorable elementary school science lessons included all of us creating working circuits with multiple switches to illuminate light bulbs. Our power source was 120 volt standard outlet. I don’t think that would be allowed in most classrooms today, but our teacher, Mrs. Carlson, was young and fearless. I was reminded of […]

The Origins of Thanksgiving Foods

On Tuesday I shared ten resources for Thanksgiving-themed lesson plans. This afternoon I discovered another good resource for a Thanksgiving lesson. The Surprising Origins of Thanksgiving Foods is a new video from It’s Okay to be Smart (a PBS production). Through the video students can learn how the most common, traditional Thanksgiving foods originated and […]

One More Halloween-themed Lesson – 4 Fun Facts About Ravens

A couple of weeks ago I shared four Halloween-themed video lessons from SciShow Kids. This morning I discovered another SciShow Kids video that falls into the same category. In 4 Things You Didn’t Know About Ravens students can learn that crows and ravens are not the same bird and how to tell the difference. The […]

How Sea Turtles Find Their Way Home

A few years ago I had the privilege to witness sea turtles nesting in Costa Rica. Since then I have been fascinated by how they are able to find their way back to their birthplaces years later. So when It’s Okay To Be Smart published a video about sea turtles, I stopped what I was […]

Four Halloween-themed Lessons from SciShow Kids

SciShow Kids is a YouTube channel produced by the same folks behind the massively popular SciShow. SciShow Kids offers short video lessons on a variety of topics from animals, to space, to fun science experiments that could be done with a parent or teacher. Recently, SciShow Kids organized a playlist of videos covering topics that […]

Ingredients – A New Series About the “Stuff Inside Your Stuff”

Ingredients is the title of a new National Geographic video series about the ingredients that go into creating common products like toothpaste, nail polish, and chewing gum. The videos feature George Zaidan examining and explaining the functions of the ingredients. After the explanation of the ingredients George attempts to create the product himself in a […]

Three Lessons About the Sound of the Human Voice

“I hate the way my voice sounds,” is often said by students and teachers the first time they hear their own voices on a podcast or video. This is because most people aren’t accustomed to hearing their own voices the way that others hear it. Why does your voice sound different to you when you […]

5 Types of Stories Students Can Tell With Digital Maps

When most teachers hear or read about Google Maps, Google Earth, ESRI, and other digital mapping tools they tend to think about social studies topics. While digital mapping tools are perfectly suited to social studies lessons, they can also be used in other subject areas including math, language arts, and science. Here are five types […]

MIT + K12 = Science Videos for K-12 Students

MIT + K12 is an MIT project that features MIT students explaining math and science concepts for K-12 students. The website isn’t a collection of Khan Academy-style videos, it’s a place where you will find videos featuring real MIT students explaining concepts while showing them as hands-on demonstrations or experiments. Watch one of the featured […]

A New TED-Ed Lesson Explains Why There Are So Many Types of Apples

It is apple picking season here in New England. Take a stroll through a local orchard and you’re likely to see a bunch of different types of apples. In fact, you might even find a type of apple that you haven’t previously seen. The reason for this is explained in a new TED-Ed lesson titled […]

Short Lessons on the Autumnal Equinox

The autumnal equinox occurs today in the northern hemisphere. If you’re looking for some resources for teaching about the equinox and the change of seasons, I have a small collection of resources for you. On National Geographic’s Education page there is a hands-on lesson that is worth noting. This hands-on activity is designed to help students understand the […]

Wild Weather Kitchen Experiments

Wild Weather Kitchen Experiments is a short series of instructional videos produced by The Open University. Each of the four videos in the series features a short lesson followed by directions for an experiment that you can carry out to see the lesson’s concepts in action. The four lessons are on avalanches, tornadoes, floods, and […]

The World of 7 Billion – A Student Video Contest

The World of 7 Billion is an annual video contest designed to get students to think about issues related to population growth. The contest asks middle school and high school students to produce sixty second videos about how population growth impacts one of the following three issues; climate change, ocean health, or rapid urbanization. Students’ videos must […]

The Sights, Sounds, and Science of Autumn

This morning I woke up to a chill in the air. As I walked my dogs I spotted a bunch of fallen, red leaves. In just over a week from now the autumnal equinox will be here in the northern hemisphere. Here are some resources for teaching and learning about the sights and sounds of […]

21 TED-Ed Lessons About Animals

Writing yesterday’s post about how animals see in the dark inspired me to look through the TED-Ed catalog for more interesting lessons about animals. As I browsed through the catalog I found lessons about how dogs “see” with their noses, why blue whales are so big, how ant colonies work, and eighteen other interesting lessons […]

How Do Animals See In the Dark?

How Do Animals See In the Dark? is a TED-Ed lesson that can help your students understand why their pet cats and other animals are more active at night than during the day. In the video students learn how the eyes of various animals have adapted to provide them with night vision that is far […]

Wonderville – Science and Technology Games for Kids

Wonderville is a great website for kids on which students can find games, videos, comics, and hands-on activities for learning about science and technology. The gallery of activities, games, videos, and comics is divided into three categories; fun science, awesome tech, and cool jobs. A couple of the Wonderville games that I like are Reaction Action and Medieval Levers. […]

Remember to Sleep – A Lesson for Students

As the new school year gets going there will be plenty of students and teachers who are adjusting to a new sleeping schedule. It can be tempting to stay up late to get “just one more thing” done. We’re actually better off going to bed and getting up early than we are if stay up […]

Science Bob Helps Students Start Science Fair Projects

Science Bob is a good resource for elementary school and middle school students in search of ideas for science fair projects. Science Bob has dozens of suggestions for science fair projects. Beyond the suggestions, Science Bob offers tips on how to build the projects and additional support resources. In the experiments section of Science Bob teachers and students will find printable directions […]

Wild Music – Songs and Sounds of Wildlife

Wild Music is a fun and educational website on which students can learn about sounds commonly heard in nature. On Wild Music students can listen to the sounds of nature and explore what creates those sounds. Some of the activities students will find include a game of animal audio memory in which students hear sounds […]

The Threat of Invasive Species

When you drive into my home state of Maine two of the first signs you’ll notice are a sign to watch for moose and a sign banning the importation of firewood. The reason for the moose crossing sign is fairly self-explanatory. The reason for the ban on importing firewood may not be so obvious. Importing […]

A Good Lesson on Hurricanes

The Atlantic hurricane season season is here and It’s Okay To Be Smart (produced by PBS) has a new video lesson about hurricanes. By watching Hurricanes: Engines of Destruction you can learn how the Coriolis effect influences the direction in which hurricanes rotate, the role of heat in hurricane formation, and the origin of the […]

The Physics of Olympic Sports

The 2016 Olympics got underway over the weekend. I was thrilled to see the U.S. men win a second consecutive silver medal in archery on Saturday afternoon. Speaking of archery, CK-12 has a great set of physics simulations about archery and eleven other Olympic sports. The simulations are available to view in your web browser […]

Exploring Marine Science in Google Earth

Google Earth is a great tool for exploring many aspects of geography. One of the features of Google Earth that seems to be frequently overlooked is the ocean imagery. Using Google Earth tours can be a good way for students to learn about marine life and habitats. The following organizations host excellent Google Earth files […]

Stacked Ball Drop – A Physics Lesson

The Physics Girl is a great YouTube channel that recently appeared as a suggestion while I was browsing the ASAP Science channel. The Physics Girl is Dianna Cowern who produces short physics lessons for students of all ages. Stacked Ball Drop is one of the videos that caught my attention while I was browsing her […]

A Tour of the Geology of U.S. National Parks

This evening while picking up pizza for dinner I ran into one of my old assistant principals who told me about the road trip that he just completed with his family. They went on a tour of national parks in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana. Listening to him reminded me of a nice […]

Collect, Customize, and Share Resources from Smithsonian Learning Labs

Late last year I wrote a post about The Smithsonian Learning Lab which is a fantastic tool for organizing the thousands of digital resources available through the various Smithsonian museums. The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create and search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans. In June the Smithsonian put forth a revamped version […]

CK-12 Concept Maps Show Kids Connections Between Math and Science

The CK-12 Foundation recently released a new feature that should help students see the connections between topics in science and mathematics. CK-12 concepts maps are interactive webs of related math and science terms. Clicking on the “details” tab below a term in the web will lead students to definitions and explanations, to interactive concept simulations, […]

How Fireworks Work

Fireworks are popping around my little town of Woodstock, Maine this evening. To my dogs the sounds of fireworks are the sounds of the sky falling. The upside of hearing the amateur fireworks displays is that it reminded me of a couple of videos about the science of fireworks. If you or your children are […]

Educational Resources About the Tour de France

My local cycling club. (We won’t be challenging for the Yellow Jersey). The Tour de France begins on Saturday. Check out this animated video to learn all about the tactics of the race, the logistics of the race, the physiology of riding in the race, and many other interesting facts about the world’s most famous […]

Free Annotated Science Research Papers Accompanied by Teaching Resources

Science in the Classroom is a free resource for teachers from Science Magazine. On Science in the Classroom you will find research papers containing interactive annotations to help students understand the content of the papers. In the right hand margin of each paper you will find a section called “learning lens.” The learning lens offers […]

Global Forest Change Explorer – Trends in Deforestation

The Global Forest Change Explorer is a new Google Maps product that provides visualizations of patterns in global deforestation. The Global Forest Change Explorer was developed in conjunction with Science in the Classroom and Dr. Matt Hansen of the University of Maryland. On the Global Forest Change Explorer you can view patterns in deforestation and […]

Neat Resources for Learning About Yellowstone

This month’s issue of National Geographic Magazine is all about Yellowstone National Park. The magazine’s website has some excellent articles, videos, and interactive graphics about the animals and geology of the park. Unfortunately, about half of the resources on National Geographic Magazine’s website are restricted to people who have paid for a subscription to the […]

A Crash Course in Physics

On the last day of March Crash Course launched a new series of videos about physics. The series now contains seven videos on friction, integrals, derivatives, Newton’s Laws, and motion. The playlist is embedded below. For some physics lessons that younger students might enjoy, take a look at NASA’s Rocket Science 101. To use these […]

Learn How to Create CK-12 FlexBooks In a Free Summer Course

Yesterday, I shared the news that CK-12 is once again running a summer math and science program for students. This evening I learned that CK-12 is offering a summer program for teachers too. CK-12’s Jumpstart Your Curriculum is a six part course for teachers who want to learn how to create great CK-12 FlexBooks. FlexBooks […]

CK-12 Brainflex is Back for 2016 – Keep Math Skills Sharp This Summer

Last year the CK-12 Foundation introduced the CK-12 Brainflex Summer Challenge. The challenge is a free program that students can use to keep their math and science skills sharp through the summer while also learning some new knowledge and gaining new skills. Students register for the program then track their skills review through the CK-12 Brainflex […]

How Much Energy is Consuming by Watching a Video?

There are a lot of things that we do every day that consume more energy than we realize. One of those things is watching videos on the Internet. I did not know that until last week when I watched a Minute Earth video titled, This Video Has Consumed “X Amount” of Energy. The “x amount” […]

An Animated Tour of the Water Cycle and Water Treatment

The US Environmental Protection Agency offers some nice resources for teaching about the water cycle and water treatment. Thirstin’s Water Cycle takes students on an animated and narrated tour of the water cycle from water, to vapor, to clouds, to rain. Thirstin’s Tour of a Water Treatment Plant takes students on a narrated tour through a […]

Explain VR Virtual Zoo – Animals in Virtual Reality

Explain VR Virtual Zoo is a free iPhone app that is designed to work with Google Cardboard. The free app features ten animals in virtual reality. Some of the animals featured in the app include giraffes, elephants, tigers, and bears. Each animal appears individually and students can see them move in virtual reality. Audio in […]

STEM in 30 – A Smithsonian Webcast for Middle School Students

STEM in 30 is a neat webcast produced by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The series featured 30 minute live webcasts about a variety of topics related to air and space travel and science. During the live webcasts students can submit questions to the show’s hosts. Students can also submit questions in advance […]

Nearly 100 TED-Ed Lessons About Nature

In recent weeks I have featured some neat National Geographic videos about cool things in nature like birds that eat dirt and animal migrations in Yellowstone. While those videos are great, they are a bit short. For longer lessons about interesting things in nature, take a look at the TED-ED playlist called Awesome Nature. 96 […]

Why Do Some Birds Eat Dirt? – National Geographic Explains

National Geographic’s YouTube channel includes a fun playlist of short videos about interesting science facts. The playlist is called Today I Learned or TIL for short. In the playlist you will find videos that answer questions like “why is the ocean salty?” and “why do some birds eat dirt?” The answer to “why do some […]

A Lesson on Bears and Punnett Squares

A recent conversation with a friend about black bears in our neighborhood (neighborhood is a relative term as I live on a six acre woodlot) reminded me about a neat National Geographic article that I read about five years ago. Back then National Geographic magazine had a cover story about the “Spirit Bears” of British Columbia. […]

16 Educational Resources for Earth Day 2016

Earth Day 2016 is on Friday. As I’ve done in the past, I’ve compiled a list of resources for teaching about Earth Day and environmental science in general. As was featured yesterday, Discovery Education offers a nice set of resources for teaching about the world’s coral reefs and biodiversity of the oceans. Expedition Earth Day is a […]

Expedition Earth Day – An Exploration of Coral Reefs

Next Friday is Earth Day 2016. Discovery Education has a great Earth Day resource for you to use with your elementary and middle school students. Expedition Earth Day is a free set of resources for teaching students about the world’s coral reefs. A 30 minute is the central aspect around which the lessons are designed. […]

Why Are Airplane Engines So Big? – How Jet Engines Work #STEM

Minute Physics recently published a great new video about jet engines. In Why Are Airplane Engines So Big? viewers can learn why jet engines have gotten larger over time, why they biggest engines don’t always go on the biggest or fastest airplanes, and the basic principles of jet propulsion. The video briefly explains the mathematics […]

Animal Migrations in Yellowstone National Park

National Geographic recently published a great video containing remarkable footage of elk, pronghorn antelope, and mule deer migrations in Yellowstone National Park. The short video describes the length and direction of the migrations made by these beautiful animals. Make sure you turn up the volume to hear the sounds of the elk, mule deer, and […]

An Interactive Build a Body Lesson

A few years ago Sponge Lab Biology won a National Science Foundation award for its interactive Build a Body activity. Spend a few minutes using Build a Body and it is easy to understand why it was recognized by the NSF. In Sponge Lab Biology’s Build a Body students construct a human body system-by-system. To build a body students drag and […]

Another Great Resource for Learning About Mount Everest

On Wednesday I shared my list of resources for teaching and learning about Mount Everest. This afternoon, thanks to Larry Ferlazzo, I learned about another good resource for learning about Mount Everest. Why is Mount Everest so Tall? is a new TED-Ed lesson in which students learn why the peak of Everest is so high, […]

What Would Happen if You Didn’t Drink Water? – And 12 Other TED-Ed Lessons About the Human Body

What Would Happen if You Didn’t Drink Water? is the title of latest TED-Ed lesson. The lesson addresses items like how much water should a person drink, how much water a body loses during an average day, and the effects of dehydration. The lesson also addresses what can happen when you consume too much water. […]

Three TED-Ed Lessons About Stress

The weekend is here and hopefully you have some relaxing things planned for yourself. Taking time to reduce stress has many benefits to our health. From zits to headaches to colds TED-Ed has three lessons about how stress can affect your body. How stress can make you sick. Does stress cause pimples? How stress affects […]

A Nice Set of Animated Science Lessons for Children

The Children’s University of Manchester has great collections of animated lessons covering seven science subjects for students of early elementary/ primary school age. The lessons cover The Body and Medicine, Energy and Environment, Earth and Beyond, Teeth and Eating, Micro-organisms, The Brain, and Exercise. For each science subject covered by The Children’s University of Manchester […]

Who Owns Antarctica? – A Political Geography Lesson

Who owns Antarctica? That’s an interesting question that many of my geography students wondered and asked over the years. The answer to that question is a clear and simple one. As more people, countries, and companies explore the continent it will become more and more important to define what can or cannot be done in […]

Wall of Birds – Hear the Calls of Birds and See Their Ranges

Wall of Birds is a new site published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The Wall of Birds features a mural of 243 hand-painted birds. The mural’s backdrop is a map of the world. You can zoom and pan across the mural to see all of the birds. Clicking on a bird will open a […]

AC/DC and Other Lessons on Electricity

This evening I watched another episode of American Genius on Netflix. The episode that I watched tonight was about the work of Thomas Edison to develop systems to deliver direct current and Nikola Tesla’s work to develop alternating current power distribution. After watching the episode I headed to YouTube to find a short video about […]

Change Your Clock, Have a Heart Attack? – Daylight Saving Lessons

In most of North America this weekend we will be moving our clocks forward by one hour for Daylight Saving Time. Last night’s edition of NBC Nightly News had an interesting story about the correlation between moving clocks forward by one hour and an increase in cases of heart attacks. The video of the story […]

More Resources for Teaching and Learning About Flight #STEM

On Sunday I wrote a post about an interactive timeline of the developments made by the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss. Here are some more resources for teaching and learning about developments in aerospace. America by Air online exhibit is a series of thirteen online activities that take students through the history of commercial aviation in […]

How Big Is The Sun? – And Five Other Lessons on the Size of the Universe

We had a beautiful winter sunset here in Woodstock, Maine tonight. It was a nice ending to a relaxing weekend. Watching the sunset while I was thinking about the week ahead prompted this post about the size of the sun and the scale of the universe. How Big Is The Sun? is a short video […]

The 2016 Google Science Fair is Now Open

The 2016 Google Science Fair is now open. This annual event asks thirteen to eighteen year old students to carry out a test or experiment on a topic that they are passionate about and then submit their projects online. The theme of this year’s Google Science Fair is on improving a process, solving a global […]

Elementary School Lessons About Fossils and Rocks

The American Geosciences Institute produces K-5 GeoSource which is a site that hosts lesson plans and other educational resources for teachers. K-5 GeoSource has a very Web 1.0 look to it, but if you do a little digging you’ll find some helpful materials. A few of the resources that I looked at were this free […]

Valentine’s Day Science and Statistics

With Valentine’s Day coming up this weekend it’s a good time looking for at science and statistics related to the day. The following video from It’s Okay To Be Smart (produced by PBS Digital Studios) explains why humans kiss, the history of symbols associated with kissing, and some cultural views of kissing. When I saw […]

How do Solar Panels Work? – A TED-Ed Lesson

One of the ways that my local school district has tried to reduce oil dependence is to use burning wood chips to heat some school buildings. We do this because solar panels aren’t a great option where we live. That begs the question, how do solar panels work? The following TED-Ed lesson answers that question […]

Two Educational Activities to Capitalize on Super Bowl Enthusiasm

I’m currently watching the Super Bowl and thinking about students who will be talking about it when they see their friends at school tomorrow. Try one of the following resources to turn your students’ enthusiasm for the Super Bowl into a fun lesson. NBC’s Science of Football is a series of ten videos from NBC Learn […]

Today I Learned – Fun Facts Featured in National Geographic Videos

National Geographic’s YouTube channel includes a fun playlist of short videos about interesting science facts. The playlist, called Today I Learned or TIL for short, is comprised of 60 to 90 second videos on things like “why is the ocean salty?” and “how chameleons change color.” The playlist is embedded below. Applications for Education The […]

What Are Carbohydrates and How Do They Impact Your Health? – TED-Ed Lesson

How Do Carbohydrates Impact Your Health? is the focus of the latest TED-Ed lesson added to my playlist of TED-Ed Lessons about the human body. How Do Carbohydrates Impact Your Health? explains what carbohydrates are, common food sources of carbohydrates, and how are bodies use carbohydrates. The lesson also explains what can happen to our […]

How Do We Know What Color Dinosaurs Were?

How Do We Know What Color Dinosaurs Were? is a new TED-Ed lesson that answers a question I often had in school. In the lesson we learn how scientists examine the melanosomes of fossilized feathers to determine the colors of some dinosaurs. The lesson explains how the physics of light and color eventually lead scientists […]