Earth Partnership for Schools
ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS AND TEACHERS
This wonderful site helps children build either a shortgrass or a tallgrass prairie from forbs & grasses to mammals, insects, amphibians/reptiles, and birds, giving them choices among six items of each category and prompting them to correct themselves if they make inappropriate choices, using an on line field guide. After each category is correctly completed, the program adds the choices to the prairie picture. When all the choices are complete, the ranger recommends a prairie burn. Smoke and flames sweep across the prairie devouring all the plants and leaving an empty black landscape that resprouts and grows back to full height. The activity includes a glossary of terms and an English/Dakota dictionary of prairie terms.
This interactive on line kids' activity has a beginner and an intermiate level. The beginners'level activity provides basic watershed information. The intermediate level tests the player's knowledge of watershed health issues in four different settings: a national park, an agricultural setting, a neighborhood, and a city. Individual players are asked a series of multiple choice questions dealing with decisions that are made in each setting that would impact the local watershed. At the end of each section, the player's answers are critiqued and scored. When the player has completed all four sections, the four scores are added up to give the player a rating of his/her watershed knowledge.
Celebrating Wildflowers On-line Coloring Book
Users can access plant pictures by scientific or common name. For each plant, there is a page that can be printed out for coloring and a color guide page. The site links to a northwest coloring book and a Texas Hill Country coloring book (both of which can be accessed on-line), lists of botanical coloring books that can be ordered, a list of wildflower resources for teachers, and an on-line gallery of plant drawings that children have sent in.
State of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on line children's environmental education activities.
Friends of the Prairie Learning Center (Neal Smith)
This is the web site for the learning center at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge located near Prairie City, IA, in Jasper County. The site includes several kids' game pages including the Prairie Passage Game page, Take a Hike game page, Prairie Poetry with prairie poems written by students, and a photo contest for kids. The main page for kids connects to an educators' page and pages on the history of the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge and a page on research at the refuge.
Journey North: A Global Study of Wildlife Migration
This web site follows several animals such as Monarch butterflies, California Gray Whales, Bald Eagles, Robins, and others on their spring and fall migrations, using maps and field observations by scientists and amateurs. The site includes instructions for teachers and schools on how to participate in the project, offers challenge questions for students, classroom materials for teachers, maps for tracking migration of a specific species, and much more.
Monarch Watch: Student Projects
The In the Classroom page of the Monarch Watch web site contains links to student research projects on rearing monarchs, tagging monarchs, larval monitoring, monarch size and mass, monarch flight vectors, and hydrogen isotopes. Instructions for each project include the rationale, background information, and detailed instructions on how to proceed. In addition, the pages include student challenge questions to encourage further, deeper discussion, information on curriculum guides for educators, and a vocabulary section.