Elementary Science
Young children learn science best by living and exploring the world around them. Come and get some great resources, tips, and ideas for teaching elementary-aged children science and discovery.
Elementary Science Teaching Tips & Ideas
How I Teach a Large Family in a Relaxed, Classical Way: Science
Family style learning is a great way to tackle lots of different subjects, including science.
Things to See & Do in Montana
Glacier National Park
Glacier preserves over 1,000,000 acres of forests, alpine meadows, and lakes. Its diverse habitats are home to over 70 species of mammals and over 260 species of birds. The spectacular glaciated landscape is a hikers paradise containing 700 miles of maintained trails that lead deep into one of the largest intact ecosystems in the lower 48 states. The park contains over 350 structures listed on the National Register of Historic Sites and six National Historic Landmarks.
Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center
The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center is a Bear and Wolf Preserve, located in West Yellowstone, Montana just a block away from the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park.
The Center offers an up close view of live grizzly bears and a pack of gray wolves.
Children's Museum of Montana
The Children's Museum of Montana is located in Great Falls and features lots of hands-on, interactive exhibits. Some museums ask their visitors not to touch the exhibits. "Look with your eyes, not with your hands," they say. That never happens at the Children's Museum of Montana. In fact, every exhibit in the entire museum is designed so that kids can touch, poke, raise, lower, push and examine to their hearts' content.
ZooMontana
ZooMontana, located in Billings, offers animal exhibits, educational programs, and special exhibits.
Smokejumper Visitor Center
The Smokejumper Visitor Center is the largest active smokejumper base in the nation. The Smokejumper Visitor Center is a unique opportunity to learn about this unusual, demanding and dramatic occupation. A tour of the facility is also available. As you walk through the center you will visit the National Smokejumper Memorial, go inside a replica of a 1930's lookout tower, and a tour of the smokejumper loft, where the smokejumpers work when they are not fighting fires. Also tour the ready room and load masters room where the smokejumpers prepare for fire calls. Tours are available at 10 and 11:00am, 2, 3, and 4:00pm daily and the tour is free of charge.
Museum of the Rockies
The Museum of the Rockies is the largest natural history museum in the region with 94,000 square feet under roof. It includes the only Digistar planetarium in the Northern Rockies and has developed a fully interpreted Living History Farm on 11 adjacent acres. Exhibits include the Hall of Horns and Teeth, One Day 80 Million Years Ago, the Bowman Fossil Bank, Enduring Peoples, Montana on the Move, the Martin Discovery Room, and many temporary exhibits. The museum is located on the south side of the Montana State University campus in Bozeman.
Yellowstone National Park
About 640,000 years ago a massive volcanic eruption spewed an immense volume of ash that covered all of the western U.S., much of the Midwest, northern Mexico and some areas of the eastern Pacific. This was one of many processes that shaped Yellowstone National Park--a region once rumored to be "the place where hell bubbles up." Geothermal wonders, such as Old Faithful, are evidence of one of the world's largest active volcanoes. These spectacular features bemused and befuddled the park's earliest visitors, and helped lead to the creation of the world's first national park.
Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area
Bighorn Lake extends approximately 60 miles through Wyoming and Montana, 55 miles of which are held within spectacular Bighorn Canyon. The Recreation Area is composed of 70,000+ acres, which straddles the northern Wyoming and southern Montana borders. There are two visitor centers and other developed facilities in Fort Smith, Montana and near Lovell, Wyoming. The Afterbay Lake below the Yellowtail Dam is a good spot for trout fishing and wildlife viewing for ducks, geese and other animals. The Bighorn River below the Afterbay Dam is a world class trout fishing area. Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area is a lesser known treasure waiting to be discovered. It boasts breath-taking scenery, countless varieties of wildlife, and abundant recreational opportunities, such as boating, fishing, ice fishing, camping, and hiking. Bighorn Canyon offers visitors what few other National Park areas can, that of solitude, serenity, and beauty.
Elementary Science Activities & Experiments
ExploraVision
ExploraVision is a competition for all students in grades K-12 attending a school in the U.S., Canada, U.S. Territory or a Department of Defense school. Homeschooled students are eligible to enter. It is designed to encourage students to combine their imagination with their knowledge of science and technology to explore visions of the future. Teams of students select a technology, research how it works and why it was invented, and then project how that technology may change in the future. They must then identify what breakthroughs are required for their vision to become a reality and describe the positive and negative consequences of their technology on society. Winning ideas have focused on things as simple as ballpoint pens and as complex as satellite communications. The student teams write a paper and draw a series of Web page graphics to describe their idea. Regional winners make a Web site and a prototype of their future vision.
Arbor Day National Poster Contest
Join over 74,000 fifth grade classrooms and home schools across America in the Arbor Day National Poster Contest. The theme chosen will increase your students’ knowledge of how trees produce and conserve energy. The free Activity Guide includes activities to use with fifth grade students to teach the importance of trees in producing and conserving energy. These activities correlate with National Science and Social Study Standards. The Guide also includes all of the information you need for poster contest participation.
Elementary Science Curriculum
Christian Kids Explore Chemistry
These user-friendly, unabashedly Christian, one-year science curriculums for elementary students include teaching lessons, coloring pages, hands-on time, memorization lists, review sheets, creative writing assignments, and a supplemental book list. The Chemistry text is intended for grades 4-8, and includes such hands-on activities as making model atoms, breaking covalent bonds, and making gas expand. It also lists chemistry terms, notations, and rules. The conversational style gives students the basic information they need, making this an ideal first course in life science, especially useful for those following a classical approach.
Featured Resources
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Montessori Play And Learn : A Parent's Guide to Purposeful Play from Two to Six
We all want the best possible starts in life for our children, and one of the best possible starts in life, educationally, is the "method" pioneered by Maria Montessori and taught successfully today throughout the world.Now, Lesley Britton, the leading Montessori practitioner in England for more than twenty years, will show parents how to bring Montessori home. If you would like to facilitate the development of your child's unique personality, make it possible for him to develop to his full inte...
Flip Over Math Manipulatives
Grades 1-5. Tub of over 500 manipulatives includes Pattern Blocks, Connecting People, Cuisenaire Rods, Coins, and Bean Counters and can be used with the Flip Over Math Books. This 49 page book (others sold separately) is written to NCTM Standards and provide hands on activities from basic math skills to advanced problem solving.
Not So Fast: Parenting Your Teen Through the Dangers of Driving
Most driving literature for parents focuses on how to teach a teen to drive, without explaining why teen driving is so dangerous in the first place or giving parents a plan to preempt the hazards teens face. By contrast, Not So Fast empowers and guides parents to understand the causes and situations that most often lead to teen crashes and to take specific, proactive steps—before and each time a teen driver gets behind the wheel—to counteract them. This authoritative guide tackles hot button iss...
The Well-Ordered Home: Organizing Techniques for Inviting Serenity into Your Life
Organizing the home is one of those desirable and beneficial activities that remain elusive for many. This practical guide explains the many benefits - physical, emotional, and spiritual - of an organized home and shows how to attain them. Breaking down the process into 50 steps, the author uses her own experiences as a psychologist and professional home organizer to help readers clear away not only the physical clutter but the psychological blocks that encourage it and hinder organization. She ...
Miserly Moms: Living on One Income in a Two-Income Economy
Save Thousands of Dollars a Year Jonni McCoy and her family are proof that you live on one income. The McCoys made a successful transition from two incomes to one while living in one of the most expensive parts of America: the San Francisco Bay Area. Her Miserly Guidelines will help you save thousands of dollars a year on everything from groceries to electricity to insurance and household cleanersas well as reveal the hidden costs of holding a job and common money wasters. Her practical,...
