In this earth science lab, students will flip M&Ms/Skittles to help them gain a better understanding as to what absolute dating is. Students will learn what radioactive elements are and how scientists use this understanding to give an age to rocks and fossils. Students will create a spreadsheet and create a graph that will visually demonstrate the half-life of Carbon 14. There are 6 word problems that they will analyze to help them understand how to use a half-life graph.

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.

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.

Dirt Bike Comparing Fractions is a multiplayer math game that allows students from anywhere in the world to play tug of war with each other while practicing comparing fractions! Students can compete against each other.

This is a fun activity where students get a bowl of Fruit Loops and then count them up and sort them by color.  Then they have to compare the numbers of each color with each other.

Comparing numbers using the Fruit Loops activity

http://www.thecurriculumcorner.com/wp-content/pdf/frootloopcompare.pdf

Here is a website that has a sliding animation to demonstrate the size of cells and compares them to many other objects, including viruses, parts of cells, and bacteria.  This would be a great visual for your students when introducing the cell.

In this Earth Science activity, students will gain a better understanding of what gases the atmosphere is made out of. Students will need to work some math problems out, converting percents and decimal places to determine ppm, parts per million. Students will gain an understanding that greenhouse gases make up such a small amount of the atmosphere, but are extremely important in keeping the temperature balance in check.

In this game, students will destroy aliens and space junk.  If they get an alien, they have to answer a context clues question.  If they miss, they lose a life.  How many aliens can they hit? If space junk hits the ship, students will be given a multiplication question to answer.

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.