Be Outside!

Play an outdoor game in which kids toss a ball to one another in a large circle. The throwing student says a word and the catching student must say a word that rhymes.

Line students up in front of an outdoor basketball hoop (or a box for younger students) with a ball. Show them a flashcard of a word that they should be able to decode. If they can pronounce the word correctly, they get to make a shot at the basket. If necessary, allow them to correct their pronunciation and shoot. Keep score if you wish. Upper-grade students or parent volunteers might help with this activity so that more than one basket can be used at a time.

Working in teams, students create a new outdoor game. They must write the rules and instructions for playing the game, and test the game to check for problems and fairness. To add challenge to this activity, provide game equipment that must be used in the game. For example, one team might be given a yardstick and a straw with which their game must be played, while another team is given a piece of chalk and a basketball. Teams share their games and all learn to play them.

Have students jump rope, counting how many jumps they can complete before they miss. Create a chart of the results and pair up names. Have student pairs add their two numbers together and then subtract their numbers from each other.

Teach students about the Fibonacci sequence as a pattern. Then investigate how the sequence is displayed in nature. Take a field trip to a park or some other natural area. Before going, check out the Fibonacci info and activities specific to plants.

Measure the area of the playground shapes (basketball courts, four-square courts, etc.). Then measure the area of playground equipment as if they were two-dimensional plane figures. You might want to first draw a picture of the area and equipment in order to assign jobs for measuring and to make sure that all parts are accounted for. 

All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Plants need water and light to live and grow.  Examples of observations could include that animals need to take in food, but plants produce their own; the different kinds of food needed by different types of animals; the requirement of plants to have light; and that all living things need water.

Plants and animals can change their environment. Examples of plants and animals changing their environment could include a squirrel digging in the ground to hide its food and that tree roots can break concrete.

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land. They live in places that have the things they need. Examples of relationships could include that deer eat buds and leaves therefore they usually live in forested areas and grasses need sunlight so they often grow in meadows. Plants, animals, and their surroundings make up a system.

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things.  Examples of human influence on the land could include planting trees after a burn, protecting farm fields from erosion, or keeping plastic trash out of waterways.

All organisms have external parts. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to see; hear; grasp objects; protect themselves; move from place to place; and seek, find, and take in food, water, and air. Plants also have different parts (roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits) that help them survive and grow. Examples of human problems that can be solved by mimicking plant or animal solutions could include: designing clothing or equipment to protect bicyclists by mimicking turtle shells, acorn shells, and animal scales; stabilizing structures by mimicking animal tails and roots on plants; keeping out intruders by mimicking thorns on branches and animal quills; and detecting intruders by mimicking eyes and ears.

Living and non-living things have distinct characteristics.

Young animals are very much, but not exactly, like their parents. Plants also are very much, but not exactly, like their parents. Individuals of the same kind of plant or animal are recognizable as similar but can also vary in many ways.  Examples of observations could include that leaves from the same kind of plant are the same shape but can differ in size, and that a particular breed of dog looks like its parents, but is not exactly the same.

Some plants can depend on animals, wind, and water for pollination or to move their seeds around. 

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water. 

Being part of a group helps animals obtain food, defend themselves, and cope with changes. Groups may serve different functions and vary dramatically in size.

Examples of evidence could include needs, characteristics of the organisms, and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.

Plants and animals have both internal and external structures that serve various functions in growth, survival, behavior, and reproduction. Animals have various body systems with specific functions for sustaining life: skeletal,
circulatory, respiratory, muscular, digestive, etc. Examples of structures could include thorns, stems, roots, colored petals, heart, stomach, lung, brain, and skin.

Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may be then processed by the animal’s brain. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions.

Rainfall helps to shape the land and affects the types of living things found in a region. Water, ice, wind, living organisms, and gravity break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller particles and move them around. Living things affect the physical characteristics of their regions. Examples could include a beaver constructing a dam to create a pond or tree roots breaking a rock.

Populations of animals are classified by their characteristics.  Sometimes the differences in characteristics between individuals of the same species provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. Examples of cause and effect relationships could be that plants that have larger thorns than other plants may be less likely to be eaten by predators, and animals that have better camouflage coloration than other animals may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring.

When the environment changes in ways that affect a place’s physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die.  Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there.

The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants. Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Some organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, break down dead organisms (both plants and animals) and therefore operate as “decomposers.” Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their particular needs are met. A healthy ecosystem is one in which multiple species of different types are each able to meet their needs in a relatively stable web of life.

Earth’s major systems are the geosphere (solid and molten rock, soil, and sediments); the hydrosphere (water and ice); the atmosphere (air); and the biosphere (living things, including humans). These systems interact in multiple ways to affect Earth’s surface materials and processes.

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, and air. Individuals and communities can often mitigate these effects through innovation and technology. 

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources. 

Predatory interactions may reduce the number of organisms or eliminate whole populations of organisms. Mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments, both living and nonliving, are shared.

Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the soil in terrestrial environments or to the water in aquatic environments. 

 Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations.

Biodiversity describes the variety of species found in Earth’s ecosystems. The completeness or integrity of an ecosystem’s biodiversity is often used as a measure of its health. Examples of ecosystem services could include water purification, nutrient recycling, and prevention of soil erosion. There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem.

Human activities can positively and negatively influence the biosphere, sometimes altering natural habitats and ecosystems. Examples of the design process include examining human interactions and designing feasible solutions that promote stewardship. Examples can include water usage (such as stream and river use, aquifer recharge, or dams and levee construction); land usage (such as urban development, agriculture, wetland benefits, stream reclamation, or fire restoration); and pollution (such as of the air, water, or land).