This U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) water resources site provides comprehensive coverage of water related issues, and includes several interactive quizzes and activities for children. Here you will find information on many aspects of water, along with pictures, data, maps, and an interactive center. Topics include: Earth's water, Water basics, Water use, Water Questions and Answers, Activity center, ... Full description.

This lesson plan introduces students to the water cycle by having them help draw a picture of a lake ecosystem and adding human impacts that affect water quality. Students will help fill in the components of a drawing of a water system. They will conclude by creating their own illustrations of human-induced changes to the freshwater habitat of a lake ecosystem. Full description.

This demonstration is designed to show the effect of acid on statues and buildings. Students will learn how acid rain is an air pollution problem as the teacher discusses the slow deterioration of statues and buildings due to the weak acid rain that falls on them. Students will learn that the sulfur and nitrogen compounds that contribute to acid rain primarily come from man-made sources, such as industries ... Full description.

Resources available from this site include: a Word Search; Masterbug Theater, which is a slideshow about the metamorphosis of Macroinvertebrate indicators in a freshwater aquatic environment; and Darby Duck and the Aquatic Crusaders, which contains experiments about the properties of water. What's Wrong With This Picture allows students to identify several sources of pollution in a suburban environment ... Full description.

This series of activities demonstrates some effects of rising levels of greenhouse gases on climate. Specifically, it shows how an increase of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere raises temperatures; higher temperatures affect the water cycle, and rising sea levels could affect coastal areas as a result of glacial and polar ice melt. Although these activities are designed to teach specific skills ... Full description.

Students participating in this lesson will collect, observe, and record particulates from the air to contrast visible and invisible air pollution. They then complete a simulation of the damage due to acid rain to illustrate invisible pollution. The lesson plan provides essential elements, objective, focus, a list of materials, background information, procedure, and ideas for enrichment. Full description.

This activity explores the potential impact of climate variability and change on one of Earth's increasingly vulnerable resources, forests. Although the activity is designed to tap specific skills and knowledge through scientific inquiry, its broader intent is to stimulate thought about the long-term impacts of a warmer planet. The scenario invites students to examine higher level issues of climate ... Full description.

This series of activities and experiments demonstrates the importance of feedbacks and the balance of mass and energy in governing the response of any system to change. Energy balance and the factors that cause change (feedbacks) are the keys to understanding climate change, and therefore the keys to understanding the effects of rising levels of greenhouse gases on the environment. Although these ... Full description.

This Classroom Connectors lesson plan explains how various activities affect the environment, such as pollution. The site provides goals, objectives, an outline, time required, materials, activities, and closure ideas for the lesson. The Classroom Connectors address content with an activity approach while incorporating themes necessary to raise the activity to a higher cognition level. The major motivation ... Full description.

These activities give students a hands-on feeling for the relationships between the Earth's structural layers and aid them in understanding the world around them. They will be able to identify (by modeling) the Earth's structure (core, mantle and crust) and also (by experiment and demonstration) the forces within the Earth that cause constant changes on the surface (earthquakes). Full description.