Hands-On Earth Science Activities For Grades K-6

MARVIN N. TOLMAN, ED.D., is a popular presenter at national meetings of science teachers, contributes to academic journals, reviews science education materials, and edits textbook and journal series. Currently, he is professor of teacher education at Brigham Young University and author of the popular Hands-On Science series from Jossey-Bass.

• Acknowledgments. About the Author.About the Library.How to Use This Book.Correlation with National Standards Grid.Key to Icons.Listing of Activities by Topic.Section One: Air.To the Teacher.Activity 1.1: How Can You Test to See Whether Air Takes Up Space?Activity 1.2: How Can You Pour Air?Activity 1.3: How Can You Tell Whether Air Has Weight?Activity 1.4: How Can You Feel the Weight and Pressure of Air?Activity 1.5: What Is Another Way to Feel Air Pressure?Activity 1.6: How Can Air Be Compressed?Activity 1.7: What Is Another Way Air Can Be Compressed?Activity 1.8: What Can a Card Teach You About Air?Activity 1.9: How Can You Crush a Gallon Can Without Touching It?Activity 1.10: How Can You Crush a Soda Can with Air Pressure?Activity 1.11: How Can Air Pressure Make Things Stronger?Activity 1.12: How Can Air Help Us Drink?Activity 1.13: How Does Air Pressure Affect Water Flow?Activity 1.14: How Hard Can Air Push?Activity 1.15: How Can You Put an Egg into a Bottle?Activity 1.16: How Can You Put a Water Balloon into a Bottle?Activity 1.17: How Much Can You Lift by Blowing?Activity 1.18: How Can Air Pressure Help Airplanes Fly?Activity 1.19: What Is the Relationship Between Moving Air and Its Pressure?Activity 1.20: How Far Can You Blow a Ping-Pong Ball from a Funnel?Activity 1.21: Why Can’t the Ball Escape the Air Stream?Activity 1.22: How Can You Make an Atomizer with a Drinking Straw?Activity 1.23: What Happens When Air Is Heated?Activity 1.24: How Can You Tell That Warm Air Rises?Activity 1.25: What Happens When Air Gets Warmer?Activity 1.26: How Can We Watch Air Expand and Contract?Activity 1.27: How Can Bubbles Show Us That Air Expands and Contracts?Activity 1.28: How Does Cold Air Behave?Activity 1.29: What Happens When Warm Air and Cold Air Mix?Activity 1.30: How Can You Get Water Out of the Air?Activity 1.31: How Can a Balloon Remain Inflated with Its Mouth Open?Air Word Searches.Do You Recall?Section Two: Water.To the Teacher.Activity 2.1: Why Do Some Things Float on Water and Others Do Not?Activity 2.2: How Does Water Disappear?Activity 2.3: What Is Condensation?Activity 2.4: How Did the Bottle Get Wet on the Outside When the Water Is Sealed on the Inside?Activity 2.5: What Is Another Way to Get Moisture Out of the Air?Activity 2.6: How Can You Boil Water in a Paper Cup?Activity 2.7: How Can We See Water Pressure?Activity 2.8: How Can You Make Water Pile Up on a Cup?Activity 2.9: How Many Nails Can You Put into a Full Glass of Water?Activity 2.10: How Does Pepper Swim?Activity 2.11: How Can You Make a Soap Motorboat?Activity 2.12: How Can You Pour Light?Activity 2.13: How Can a Water Drop Make Things Appear Larger?Activity 2.14: How Can Water Make a Coin Appear?Activity 2.15: What Do Bears Know That Many People Don’t?Activity 2.16: What Can You Learn from an Egg?Activity 2.17: How Can We Use a Soda Straw to Compare Density of Liquids?Activity 2.18: How Does Temperature Affect the Speed of Molecules?Activity 2.19: What Happens When Water Changes to a Solid?Activity 2.20: How Can You Make a “Worm”?Activity 2.21: How Do Raisins Dance?Activity 2.22: How Does Lake Water Compare with Seawater?Activity 2.23: Which Changes Temperature More Easily, Land or Water?Activity 2.24: How Are Ocean Currents Affected by Wind?Activity 2.25: How Are Ocean Currents Affected by Temperature?Water Word Searches.Do You Recall?Section Three: Weather.To the Teacher.Activity 3.1: How Can You Make Rain?Activity 3.2: How Can You Make a Cloud?Activity 3.3: How Can You Make a Thermometer?Activity 3.4: How Can We Detect and Measure Changes in Atmospheric Pressure?Activity 3.5: How Can We Measure Moisture in the Air?Activity 3.6: What Is Another Way to Measure Humidity?Activity 3.7: How Can We Compare the Wet/Dry Bulb and Hair Hygrometers?Activity 3.8: What Does a Wind Vane Do, and How Can You Make One?Activity 3.9: What Is Another Design for a Wind Vane?Activity 3.10: How Can You Make a More Sensitive Wind Vane?Activity 3.11: How Can You Use a Wind Vane?Activity 3.12: How Can Wind Speed Be Measured?Activity 3.13: How Does an Anemometer Work?Activity 3.14: How Can Rainfall Be Measured?Activity 3.15: How Can You Operate a Weather Station?Activity 3.16: What Is the Best Source of Information for Predicting Weather?Activity 3.17: What Are Some Unusual Ways to Predict and Explain Weather?Activity 3.18: How Do Heating and Cooling Affect Air Currents?Activity 3.19: What Can We Learn from a Convection Box?Activity 3.20: What Makes Rain?Activity 3.21: What Is a Cold Front?Weather Word Searches.Do You Recall?Section Four: The Earth.To the Teacher.Activity 4.1: How Are Size and Distance Shown on a Map?Activity 4.2: How Can You Show Your School Grounds on a Sheet of Paper?Activity 4.3: How Can a Flat Map Show Three Dimensions?Activity 4.4: What Are Contour Lines?Activity 4.5: What Is a Contour Map? Activity 4.6: How High and Low Are the Earth’s Mountains and Valleys?Activity 4.7: How Can a Flat Map Represent the Globe-Shaped Earth?Activity 4.8: How Does the Nature of the Earth’s Surface Affect Atmospheric Temperature?Activity 4.9: How Do Mountains Affect Yearly Rainfall?Activity 4.10: What Can You Learn from a Square Meter of Soil?Activity 4.11: How Is Soil Made?Activity 4.12: What Factors Affect Water Erosion?Activity 4.13: In What Order Do Materials Settle in Water?Activity 4.14: How Are Rocks Classified?Activity 4.15: How Do Rocks Compare in Hardness?Activity 4.16: What Color Streak Does a Rock Make?Activity 4.17: How Do Rocks React to Vinegar?Activity 4.18: Which Rocks Are Attracted by a Magnet?Activity 4.19: Which Rocks Conduct Electricity?Activity 4.20: How Can Rocks Be Dissolved in Water?Activity 4.21: How Do Crystals Form?Activity 4.22: What Type of Crystals Do Rocks Have?Activity 4.23: What Is Conglomerate Rock?Activity 4.24: How Can You Start a Rock Collection?Activity 4.25: What Other Classifications of Rocks Are There?Activity 4.26: How Can You Measure the Density of a Rock?Activity 4.27: How Can You Make a Permanent Shell Imprint?Activity 4.28: How Is Snow Compacted into Ice to Form Glaciers?Activity 4.29: How Is the Earth Like Your Body?Activity 4.30: How Is the Earth Like a Jigsaw Puzzle?Activity 4.31: What Are the Earth’s Plates?Activity 4.32: What Causes Earthquakes?Activity 4.33: How Can You Make a Volcano Replica?Activity 4.34: What Is the Rock Cycle?Activity 4.35: How Old Is the Earth?Earth Word Searches.Do You Recall?Section Five: Ecology.To the Teacher.Activity 5.1: What Is a Simple Plant-Animal Community?Activity 5.2: What Is a Pond Community?Activity 5.3: What Is a Simple Ecosystem?Activity 5.4: How Is Energy Transferred in an Ecosystem?Activity 5.5: Where Do People Fit into an Ecosystem?Activity 5.6: How Do You Fit into a Personal Ecosystem?Activity 5.7: How Do You Live at Home?Activity 5.8: How Do You Live in Your Classroom?Activity 5.9: How Does Our School Community Function?Activity 5.10: How Is Your School Like an Ecosystem?Activity 5.11: Where Can We Begin?Activity 5.12: What Is Litter?Activity 5.13: What Is in the Air Besides Air?Activity 5.14: How Does Our Water Become Polluted?Activity 5.15: How Can You Help an Ecosystem?Activity 5.16: How Can We Improve Our Environment?Activity 5.17: How Can We Involve Others?Activity 5.18: What Is a Wise Consumer?Activity 5.19: What Changes Have Happened Where You Live?Activity 5.20: Do You Conserve Your Resources Wisely?Activity 5.21: How Can You Reuse Newspaper?Activity 5.22: Which Solids Decompose Easily?Activity 5.23: How Can You Make a Water Treatment Plant?Activity 5.24: What Have We Learned?Ecology Word Searches.Do You Recall?Section Six: Above the Earth.To the Teacher.Activity 6.1: What Is the History of Flight?Activity 6.2: What Is a Wind Tunnel?Activity 6.3: How Does Shape Affect Lift?Activity 6.4: How Can You Build a Simple Glider?Activity 6.5: Will Your Airplane Soar?Activity 6.6: How Can We Turn Our Gliders?Activity 6.7: How Can We Make Our Gliders Go Up and Down?Activity 6.8: What Have We Learned About Flying?Activity 6.9: What Aircraft Will You Fly?Activity 6.10: How Well Can You Fly?Activity 6.11: Can You Create an Airplane of a New Design?Activity 6.12: How Will You Design an Airplane for a Special Task?Activity 6.13: How Can a Ball Help You Move?Activity 6.14: What Type of Energy Is This?Activity 6.15: What Can a Marble Game Teach Us?Activity 6.16: How Can We Use Action-Reaction?Activity 6.17: How Can You Make a Soda Straw Rocket?Activity 6.18: How Do Other Forces Affect Your Rocket’s Performance?Activity 6.19: How Does Gravity Affect Objects?Activity 6.20: How Does Inertia Affect Objects?Activity 6.21: How Can You Put a Coin in a Glass Without Touching the Coin?Activity 6.22: How Do Gravity and Inertia Affect Space Travel?Activity 6.23: How Can You Compare Gravity and Inertia?Activity 6.24: How Does Weightlessness Feel?Above the Earth Word Searches.Do You Recall?Section Seven: Beyond the Earth.To the Teacher.Activity 7.1: What Does Our Earth Look Like?Activity 7.2: How Does the Earth Move?Activity 7.3: What’s the Difference Between the Rotation and the Revolution of the Earth?Activity 7.4: How Can We Tell Time with Soda Straws?Activity 7.5: What Paths Do the Earth and Similar Objects Follow?Activity 7.6: How Do Man-Made Satellites Help Us?Activity 7.7: How Is Our Moon a Natural Satellite?Activity 7.8: What Is the Appearance of the Surface of the Moon?Activity 7.9: How Does the Moon Give Off Light?Activity 7.10: How Does the Moon Travel Around the Earth?Activity 7.11: What Are Phases of the Moon?Activity 7.12: How Can We Make a More Accurate Moon Model?Activity 7.13: How Can You Safely View a Solar Eclipse?Activity 7.14: What Is a Solar System?Activity 7.15: How Can You Study a Planet?Activity 7.16: How Large Is the Solar System?Activity 7.17: How Can You Make a Distance Scale Solar System in Your School?Activity 7.18: How Can We Learn More About the Solar System and Space?Beyond the Earth Word Searches.Do You Recall?