Cornell University and New York State 4-H as developed the 4-H Science Toolkit. It is a collection of science activities - perfect for youth grades 3-6. The activities have been developed for afterschool, in-school, clubs and youth groups, camps and others wishing to explore science. Lessons are written to be be "grab and go" for any leader or teacher. Most can be taught with items found around the home and will take less than 1 1/2 hours to complete.
Although the series is still in draft form, once completed, the Toolkit will be made up of six stand alone activities for each topic. Activities have been contributed by 4-H educators and Cornell University staff.
Resources will continue to be added in coming months.
Free downloadable 4-H Science Toolkit Lesson Plans:
Animal Science (pdf) (NYS learning standards) Topics: Explore animal body temperatures and ways animals regulate their temperature, learn how animals protect themselves from disease and illness, learn to read behavioral signals from animals and discover why they behave the way they do in the wild, discover the basic parts of the respiratory system in animals and in humans and learn about respiration rates for different animals, experiment with various activities to help them understand how animals use their senses to survive, examine animal foods to find out what nutri-ents are important for animal health and for people.
Lost Ladybugs (pdf) (NYS learning standards) Topics: Insect life cycles and the food web, biological control of insect pests, biodiversity, building a sweep net, capturing, cataloguing and storing insects, submitting data to the Lost Ladybug Project
Entomology (pdf) (NYS learning standards) Activities: Explore the way spiders leave their nests, learn about some of the 80,000 different species of beetles and how to tell them from other insects, learn how yellow jackets and hornets create their nests full of combs, discover how to measure the quality of a stream by collecting and cataloguing the insects that live there, wander into the woods to find unusual growths on plants and learn what caused them and what might live inside.
Geospatial Science (pdf) (NYS learning standards) Activities:
Fabric/Flight (pdf) (NYS learning standards) Activities:
Astronomy (pdf) (NYS learning standards) Activities: Gaze at the night sky and learn to identify constellations and find out how ancient people used stars to chart the seasons and tell stories, discover how they can use the sun to tell time, experiment with light and objects to learn how solar and lunar eclipses happen, model the scale size and distance of planets and the sun, then, learn ways to remember the names of the planets in the correct order.
Climate in Your Backyard (pdf) (NYS learning standards) Activities:
