Idea Sheets

Match the animals in this great identification game for young students.
Subjects: Physical Science, Math

This fun activity will give students the opportunity to create basic animations that can help them understand how motion pictures and the human eye work.
Subjects: Physical Science, Life Science, Art

Apples make a wonderful, fall theme for pre-school or kindergarten classrooms. This game plays like Concentration: students turn over apples showing number equivalents to find and collect matching pairs.
Subjects: Math

Graph a curve and derive a quadratic model from experimental data in this wet and wonderful activity that demonstrates how math and science flow together!
Subjects: Physical Science, Math

This popular activity plays like the card game "War", but with a new twist. Players estimate, and then measure, the area of shapes by covering them with centimeter blocks. With practice, they internalize the concept of area and learn to estimate it. This activity can also be used to learn about perimeter. Adding more layers of blocks introduces the concept of volume.
Subjects: Math

The human body is complicated, with amazing ranges of motion. Explore the difficulties in recreating a life-like body by examining action figure toys.
Subjects: Life Science

Make a cloud "mirror" and use to do small scale observations of the clouds and sky.
Subjects: Earth/Space Science

Atomic structure becomes clear when using these magnetic pieces to represent protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Subjects: Physical Science

Students who enjoy puzzles will find this activity very intriguing. This provides opportunities for both "logical" and "visual" thinkers to shine!
Subjects: Physical Science, Math, Language Arts

Explore heating with sunlight using a solar collector that is easy to make and store.
Subjects: Physical Science, Earth/Space Science

Create an autograph book to share with friends
Subjects: Language Arts, Art

This diorama helps students visualize life and ecology in an arctic environment.
Subjects: Life Science, Earth/Space Science

This is a great activity for investigating sound. It might just be a history lesson about records for your students; and you can tell them, "No, this will not work with CDs."
Subjects: Physical Science

Balancing an object takes more than just coordination. The distribution of mass in an object determines its center of gravity and its rotational inertia.
Subjects: Physical Science, Life Science

Objects are more stable when they have a low center of mass. This game allows students to investigate balance and discover that raising an object's center of mass increases its tendency to tip over... and they have fun in the process!
Subjects: Physical Science