1: Earth and Space Sciences

1.A: Explain the characteristics, cycles and patterns involving Earth and its place in the solar system.

1.A.1: Describe how night and day are caused by Earth's rotation.

Seasons: Earth, Moon, and Sun

1.A.2: Explain that Earth is one of several planets to orbit the Sun, and that the Moon orbits Earth.

Gravity Pitch
Solar System

1.A.3: Describe the characteristics of Earth and its orbit about the Sun (e.g., three-fourths of the Earth's surface covered by a layer of water [some of it frozen], the entire planet surrounded by a thin blanket of air, elliptical orbit, tilted axis, and spherical planet).

Comparing Earth and Venus
Gravity Pitch
Summer and Winter

2: Life Sciences

2.B: Analyze plant and animal structures and functions needed for survival and describe the flow of energy through a system that all organisms use to survive.

2.B.1: Describe the role of producers in the transfer of energy entering ecosystems as sunlight to chemical energy through photosynthesis.

Energy Conversions
Forest Ecosystem

2.B.2: Explain how almost all kinds of animals' food can be traced back to plants.

Prairie Ecosystem

2.B.3: Trace the organization of simple food chains and food webs (e.g., producers, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and decomposers).

Forest Ecosystem
Prairie Ecosystem

2.C: Compare changes in an organism's ecosystem/habitat that affect its survival.

2.C.4: Summarize that organisms can survive only in ecosystems in which their needs can be met (e.g., food, water, shelter, air, carrying capacity and waste disposal). The world has different ecosystems and distinct ecosystems support the lives of different types of organisms.

Pond Ecosystem
Rabbit Population by Season

2.C.6: Analyze how organisms, including humans, cause changes in their ecosystems and how these changes can be beneficial, neutral or detrimental (e.g., beaver ponds, earthworm burrows, grasshoppers eating all plants, people planting and cutting trees, and people introducing a new species).

Pond Ecosystem

3: Physical Sciences

3.D: Summarize the way changes in temperature can be produced and thermal energy transferred.

3.D.2: Trace how thermal energy can transfer from one object to another by conduction.

Conduction and Convection
Heat Transfer by Conduction

3.E: Trace how electrical energy flows through a simple electrical circuit and describe how the electrical energy can produce thermal energy, light, sound and magnetic forces.

3.E.3: Describe that electrical current in a circuit can produce thermal energy, light, sound and/or magnetic forces.

Circuit Builder

3.E.4: Trace how electrical current travels by creating a simple electric circuit that will light a bulb.

Circuit Builder

3.F: Describe the properties of light and sound energy.

3.F.5: Explore and summarize observations of the transmission, bending (refraction) and reflection of light.

Basic Prism

4: Science and Technology

4.A: Describe how technology affects human life.

4.A.1: Investigate positive and negative impacts of human activity and technology on the environment.

Pond Ecosystem
Water Pollution