This site provides an overview of the earth's atmospheric greenhouse effect by briefly exploring the atmospheres of nearby planets and discussing the greenhouse gases of our atmosphere. Information at this site helps students to understand that the greenhouse effect is what makes this planet suitable for life as we know it and that the earth's atmosphere contains trace gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide, ... Full description.

This is a basic lesson on clouds. Very nice photos of cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds are presented on the page as well as a description of all major cloud types and their associated weather. Two activities are presented. One invites the learner to create a cloud, while the other involves creating a collage of cloud images along with information about the weather associated with each cloud type. Full description.

Web Weather for Kids offers hands-on classroom activities for students to learn about selected severe weather phenomena. Each activity has step-by-step instructions, materials lists, and guiding questions for students. A Teacher Tips page offers implementation strategies for teachers. Phenomena covered include the formation of thunderstorms, lightning, and tornados. Students explore the concepts of ... Full description.

The Gulf of Maine Aquarium hosts this two-part activity. The focus is on seasonal changes in the mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Part 1 uses an atlas and satellite imagery to examine the geography of the region and the changing boundaries of the ice sheet. Part 2 tracks annual changes in sea ice. There is an animation page showing changes in ice cover around Antarctica during 1991, and links ... Full description.

In this investigation, students examine Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. After becoming familiar with a bathymetric/topographic map of the area, students select a transect along the seafloor to study some of the geological, biological, and physical features that are present. In this activity students use a bathymetric/topographic map as a tool for recognizing geobiological features of the sanctuary, ... Full description.

This site offers facts and information, photographs, classroom activities, games, and other materials related to marine biology and geared towards elementary schol students and teachers. Topics include fish, mollusks, crustaceans, echinoderms, mammals, endangered species, and others. Full description.

Windows to the Universe is a user-friendly learning system pertaining to the Earth and Space sciences. The objective of this project is to develop an innovative and engaging web site that spans the Earth and Space sciences and includes a rich array of documents, including images, movies, animations, and data sets that explore the Earth and Space sciences and the historical and cultural ties between ... Full description.

Virtual Earthquake is an interactive web-based program designed to introduce the concepts of how an earthquake epicenter is located and how the Richter magnitude of an earthquake is determined. Virtual Earthquake shows the recordings of an earthquake's seismic waves detected by instruments far away from the earthquake. The instrument recording the seismic waves is called a seismograph and the recording ... Full description.

This site allows teachers to use data from ocean drifting buoys to integrate ocean science into their classroom science and math instruction. It offers educational activities and curriculum materials developed and tested by teachers. Lesson plans on currents, moving water, building and tracking drifters are also available. Alternatively, educators may opt to use only the data, background information ... Full description.

This chapter of the GLOBE Teacher's Guide presents information on how to characterize soil profiles and measure soil moisture and temperature. K-12 students from all over the world are participating in the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program by taking environmental measurements at their schools and sharing their data via the Internet. Measurement protocols and ... Full description.