In this classroom exercise, students will "build" a comet using representative materials. Learning outcomes, concepts, and a link to the comet "recipe" are provided. Safety tips, comet facts, and links to additional information are also included. Full description.

This activity and demonstration teaches the concept of parallax (the apparent movement of an object caused by a change in the viewer's position) and relates the concept to a real-world astronomical event, ­the discovery of Pluto. It employs the Blink Comparator, an online simulation illustrating the technique used by Clyde Tombaugh to discover the ninth planet on February 18, 1930. Full description.

A learning activity for the "Do You Know That Clouds Have Names?" book in the Elementary GLOBE series. Using information from the book and their observations, students construct a sky scene with trees and buildings as reference points on the ground and cloud types ordered by altitude in the sky. Students will describe clouds using their own vocabulary and will then correlate their descriptions with ... Full description.

A learning activity for the "Do You Know That Clouds Have Names?" book in the Elementary GLOBE series. Students will explore the difference between the three types of contrails, make observations of contrails outside, and record their observations. Fifteen minutes later they will make follow-up observations to see how the contrails they observed have changed. The purpose of the activity is to help ... Full description.

In this activity, students construct a "comet" from ingredients similar to those found in actual comets. They will learn about the behavior of a real comet by observing their model as the dry ice sublimates, and understand the concept of scale as they compare the size of their model to the size of a real comet. A list of materials and instructions are provided. This activity can be performed as a ... Full description.

This is an online activity book from the National Weather Service that teaches about hazardous weather. The site also includes links to kids sites for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA). Full description.

Clouds comprise a wonderful focus for classroom study. They're ubiquitous, ever-changing, scientifically interesting and, most importantly for teachers, they're cheap. The material presented here includes sections on cloud formation, cloud types, cloud pictures, other cloud-related phenomena, and a glossary. Full description.

Each student will keep a science journal during each of the four seasons. Students will record observations of the general outdoor environment they visit and then will make observations of one specific item from the habitat in each season. At the end of the school year, students will make comparisons of their seasonal drawings and share the results with the class. The purpose of the activity is to ... Full description.

In this module, students carry out a number of activities that demonstrate the concepts of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and soil moisture and runoff. The students then construct a terrarium as a way to observe the water cycle as a whole. Immediately following this, students use the Internet to acquire Real Time Data from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington which they can then use to describe ... Full description.

The purpose of this activity is to observe the type and cover of clouds including contrails. Students observe which of ten types of clouds and how many of three types of contrails are visible and how much of the sky is covered by clouds (other than contrails) and how much is covered by contrails. Intended outcomes are that students learn how to make estimates from observations and how to categorize ... Full description.