In this Google Drawing activity, students will create a concept map using the following words: Earth Science, geology, waves, currents, astronomy, oceanography, stars, volcanoes, planets, meteorology, fossils, weather, climate, rocks galaxies, thunderstorms, tides, tsunamis, lightning, comets, minerals, asteroids, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes.

In this Earth Science Lab, students will design and experiment that will help them determine the densities of different rocks and minerals. This is a follow up lab to the Phet Density Lab that they would have already completed in my class. You can find the Phet Density Lab in the Educational Resource store. This Rock Density lab however can still be given if you have already discussed how to go about finding mass, volume and densities of rocks and minerals.

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In this 3rd through 10th-grade lab, students will observe the formation of salt crystals. Students will also add food coloring to their dissolved salt solution to demonstrate how chemical impurities can change a mineral's color. If you have enough students doing the lab your class will get to see many different results. This Earth Science lab comes with the student work, student image sample results, and with my own insights and explanations as to how the experiment can work well.

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In this activity students will determine the type of soil they have as well as figure out the pH level of the soil. Students will reinforce their soil vocabulary in this lab: sand, clay, silt, loam. Students will practice using a soil pyramid.

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This Google search activity allows students to go to the internet to search for specific minerals and then to use the Periodic Table to discover what elements the mineral is made out of. This activity usually takes a full 50 minutes for the students to find all of the answers. Students will investigate 12 different minerals and which elements make the mineral up. They will look at a periodic table and decide whether the elements are metals or nonmetals. Students will also search the internet and find out some industrial uses for each mineral.

In this demonstration, students will get a better understanding of what a geyser is and what makes it function the way it does.  I was worried about trying this at the high school earth science level because it is a bit elementary, but the science is sound, and it works.  Materials needed are:

In this assignment, students will open up a Google Doc, you can have it printed as well, and fill out a table of some very useful industrial ores. The ores that will be researched are diamonds, gold, rock salt, bauxite, iron, and titanium. Students will research which 3 countries in the world are the top producers of each ore. They will then find and write 2 or more industrial uses for each ore. As they are doing their research, students will also use a map and mark where these countries are. This is great to reinforce the geography standards.

This is an interactive digital glacier lab that will help students understand what glaciers are, what some of the formations and deposits look like, and will have students explore how glaciers grow and shrink, and how scientists go about discovering glacial movement speeds over time as well as finding out how scientists come up with the numbers of how long glaciers will last at current rates. Students will actually be the scientists discovering the rate of speed as they build their own interactive glacier using PhET. You will need computers that can run Java.

In this Earth Science or Physical Science lab, students will gain an understanding of the three types of thermal energy transfer: conduction, radiation, and convection. Students will use hot, cold, and room temperature water to demonstrate convection by using food coloring. Students will then see how long chocolate chips take to melt when you add heat to just one side of some tin foil. Finally, they will use heat lamps, thermometers, and dark and light-colored papers to demonstrate radiation and the absorption of radiated heat.

In this lab students design and experiment that will oxidize a penny. The purpose of this lab besides demonstrating chemical weathering is to assess how well students are understanding the scientific method as well as their ability to think outside the box by taking content knowledge and applying it in a lab situation. I stand back from this lab to see how well students perform. Students will observe their pennies each day until their pennies are dry or for 3 or more days, depending on how they set up their design.