An excellent lesson awaits your young scientists! In it, learners are invited to explore the world of pulleys, levers, and planes; simple machines that make lifting heavy things much, much easier. They watch video, and engage in hands-on...

Connect the ideas of jazz improvisation and art to writing poetry. Learners collaborate and write different lines of poetry, imitating the jazz styles of improvisation and freewriting. Take a close look at the poems "Tenebrae" by Yusef...

Explore the human body through hands-on activities. Young learners will trace their bodies and place cut out body organs in the proper place, print patterns using cut fruit, sing songs about good nutrition, and use their five senses...

A tea party in Wonderland? An East Egg brunch with Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Nick? Breakfast with Miss Havisham, Lady Macbeth, and Abigail Williams? Or dinner with Andre, Hamlet, and Randle Patrick McMurphy? Class members select a favorite...

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...

A fabulous lesson plan on identifying circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles awaits your students. They use large motor skills hopping from shape to shape, use visual and kinesthetic skills passing a ball of yarn between three...

I can't stress enough the importance of songs and rhyming chants to the development of early literacy skills. To reinforce color recognition, little ones sing, count, move, and create. All you have to do is choose which of these great...

Groups make a model of an Ocean Commotion exhibit based on what they saw during the fieldtrip. These dioramas can be used as an informal assessment of student knowledge acquired at Ocean Commotion.

What do Jeep advertisements and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath have in common? They both employ the art of the extended metaphor! Using the Six-Trait Writing model, learners begin to work on their own extended metaphors. Development...

Study cause and effect in both literature and informational text with a lesson designed for several different reading levels. After kids review the concept of cause and effect, they read an article or story and note the causes and...

Your kids can identify the plot sequence of a short story, but what about an informational article? Have them examine the chronological order of events in informational texts with a lesson on the sequence of events. 

What happens next? Work on story sequence with a lesson that prompts kids to put a story back in order. Additionally, they discuss what would happen if one event was missing from the sequence.

Class members choose a current social, political, environmental, or economic problem presented in Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, research this problem and a variety of suggested solutions, before...

Should junk food be banned in schools? Should the US open its borders to all immigrants? Should the US impose term limits for the House of Representatives and for the Senate? Using Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas...

Artists employ a basic metalworking technique by embossing lines and textures into a soft metal. They look for examples of embossed metals in historical and contemporary examples. This fascinating process has been used by many cultures...

High schoolers analyze mood and voice in Emily Dickinson's poem, "There's a Certain Slant of Light." After the analysis, learners write a poem of their own emulating the Dickinson poem, and then write a one-page essay describing what...

Students analyze how Emily Dickinson perceived herself as a poet. Students read correspondence between Dickinson and her preceptor, Mr. Higginson to determine the depths of their relationship. Students interpret several of her poems.

Learners construct a model of an electromagnetic spectrum using play-doh and string. They use exponents and plot the radio/microwave, infrared, and visible bandwidths of the spectrum.

Students examine British surnames that are derived from family occupations. They investigate some of the more common names that are still prevalent today.

Students create wax sculptures of a full body using mathematical calculations and information gathered from a video in this excellent art project. The lesson can be used along or within the unit provided.

If you want more pumpkin seeds, you should get a bigger pumpkin—right? Young harvesters use estimation skills to make a hypothesis about how many seeds they will find in a pumpkin before examining the real number inside.

Ancient religion was often times closely linked to social structure and government. Hand out a handy guide that describes 12 major gods and goddesses from ancient Mesopotamia. They are each connected to a location, symbol, and force of...

In this chemistry worksheet, young scholars write the structures for the compounds illustrated on the sheet. Then they name the compounds whose structures are illustrated in part two. Students also fill in the blanks to complete the...

High schoolers explore characterization in Little Women. In this literature lesson, students participate in written analysis and research in order to explore Alcott's characterization in the novel.