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Ant Homes Under the Ground
(Grades Pre K–1)
Ant Homes Under the Ground Under the Ground
unitizes observation, comparing, communicating, role
playing, and cooperative work skills while improving
counting, problem solving, spatial reasoning,
computation, and data-gathering math skills. |
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Aquatic Habitats
(Grades 2–6)
The investigations in Aquatic Habitats help students gain insight into many of the big ideas of science that permeate not only the biological sciences, but all scientific disciplines, including systems and interactions, stability within systems, and patterns of change. |
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Bubble Festival
(Grades K–6)
The free exploration of Bubble Festival allows children to learn some important things that may be difficult for us to anticipate, label, or even detect at the time. In “Bubble Measurement” for example, the approaches of your students will depend on background and experience. While one student may focus on the concept that a bubble can be measured, another may notice a relationship between circumference and diameter. |
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Bubble•ology
(Grades 5-8)
Bubbles are not only captivating, colorful, and fun to make, they are also excellent demonstrations of scientific phenomena. Some of the topics introduced in GEMS Bubble•ology are: light and color, aerodynamics, chemical composition, surface tension, and technology. |
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Buzzing a Hive
(Grades
K–3)
Studying bees in a classroom generates enthusiasm for these helpful insects and promotes a respect for bees and other living things. GEMS Buzzing a Hive allows students to explore the complexity of the honeybee’s social behavior, communication, and hive environment.
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Color
Analyzers
(Grades 5–8)
The GEMS Color Analyzers unit engages students in fascinating investigations that effectively challenge commonly held misconceptions and lead to a fuller understanding of the nature of light and color. Students construct and use a tool called a color analyzer to observe phenomena that are normally hidden from view. |
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Crime Lab Chemistry
(Grades 4–8)
Drawing on students’ interest in and enthusiasm for solving mysteries, GEMS Crime Lab Chemistry provides multiple experiences for students to strengthen their inquiry skills and abilities, and to convey important scientific concepts, methods, and techniques. |
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Earth, Moon and Stars
(Grades 5–8)
The activities in this unit guide students into using the sky to answer their questions about the Earth, Moon, and stars. They improve their thinking skills, such as observing, measuring, recording, map reading, using models to explain observations, and inventing their own models. Students gain deeper understanding and appreciation of the Earth and its relationship to the Sun, Moon, stars, and gravity. |
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Eggs, Eggs, Everywhere
(Grades Pre K–1)
Eggs, Eggs, Everywhere not only has students explore eggs and the animals that come from them, but their form and function, the way they move, and the relationship of how they move in relation to their shape. Students investigate further into nesting and parenting behaviors, habitats, and the life cycles of some animals that lay eggs. |
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Electric Circuits
(Grades 3–6)
Although electric appliances are a part of everyday modern life, may people have little or no idea, or wrong ideas, about how electricity works. GEMS Electric Circuits for Grades 3-6 provides repeated experiences and open-ended opportunities for students to explore basic and more advanced concepts in electric circuits. |
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Elephants and Their
Young
(Grades Pre K–1)
Elephants and Their Young activities have a strong emphasis on elephant structure and function, family interactions, and habitat, providing an important introduction to fundamental life science concepts; an examination of water in the lives of elephants supports key concepts in physical science. |
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Environmental Detectives
(Grades 5–8)
Who does not enjoy solving a mystery? Scientific investigation is about gathering evidence toward the solution of the mysteries of the natural world. GEMS Environmental Detectives challenges students to solve an environmental mystery involving a watershed that includes forests, a city and town, a coast, three rivers, a lake, and a pond. |
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Fingerprinting
(Grades 4–8)
GEMS Fingerprinting offers “fingers-on” activities that invite students to investigate the similarities and variations of fingerprints. As crime lab scientists, they seek to solve a fictional mystery –“Who Robbed the Safe?” |
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Ladybugs
(Grades Pre K–1)
Ladybugs entices children to go beyond their fascination of the tiny size and bright red color of ladybugs, inviting them to make observations of their body structure, defensive behavior, and favorite foods. Children also learn about the life cycle of a ladybug and how ladybugs are helpful to plants. |
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Matter
(Grades 1–3)
Designed to meet the demand for improved physical science units in the early grades, the GEMS Matter guide challenges students to inquire into the physical world around them. Within this unit students explore solids, liquids, and gases, then delve deeper into states of matter when looking at “challenging substances.” |
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Mother Opossum and Her Babies
(Grades Pre K–1)
Mother Opossum and Her Babies is filled with creative and fun activities designed to develop science and math concepts appropriate for young students. It also provides many opportunities for children to compare and contrast their own growth and development with that of the opossum. |
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Ocean Sciences Sequence
(Grades Pre 3–5)
Ocean Sciences Sequence develops students’ ocean literacy by teaching standards-based science concepts and building inquiry skills in the compelling context of ocean science. Students learn that the ocean is big, deep, and the defining feature of our planet. The Ocean Sciences Sequence for Grades 3-5 covers the following topics:
Unit 1: What Kind of Place Is the Ocean?
Unit 2: What Is Life Like in the Ocean?
Unit 3: How Are Humans and the Ocean Connected?
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Penguins and Their
Young
(Grades Pre K–1)
Penguins and Their Young encourages students to improve their observation, comparing, communication, creative- and logical-thinking, and role-playing skills while learning about penguin habitats, body structure, parenting, and feeding strategies. Physical science plays an important role in this unit, touching on the concepts of heat and warmth, melting, freezing, ice, floating, size, and shape. And let’s not forget math; measurement, numbers, patterns, and logic all have a place in
Penguins and Their Young. |
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Schoolyard
Ecology
(Grades 3–6)
Schoolyard Ecology brings together a combination of science and mathematics skills as students compile information and construction concept about the environment. Students work in teams outdoors to sample, record, and analyze information about organisms and conditions in the yard, and then return to the classroom to share and interpret their findings. |
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Space Science
Sequence
(Grades 3–5)
GEMSŪ Space Science Sequence for Grades 3-5 introduces students to fundamental concepts in space science using the Sun-Earth-Moon system as the foundation. Through the use of models, hands-on investigations, peer-to-peer discussions, reflection, and informational student readings, students build an understanding of scale in astronomy, the motion of objects in a planetary system, and the related concepts of gravity and the nature of light and shadow. These key space science concepts prepare them to investigate and understand more complex space science concepts in middle school and beyond. Students investigate size and scale relative to distance, Earth’s shape and gravity, how Earth moves, and moon phases and eclipses in 4 flexible units. |
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Stories
in Stone
(Grades 4–8)
By examining actual specimens of the Earth’s crust, students learn about basic processes that have shaped and transformed the Earth over billions of years. Working in small groups, students use a boxed set of 10 prenumbered rock and mineral samples to learn how rocks and minerals differ, then classify the samples. |
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Terrarium
Habitats
(Grades K–6)
Terrarium Habitats offers students the opportunity to explore a world of earthworms and insects, seeds and plant roots, tunnels and burrows that can be found beneath the surface of the ground. Students explore soil—it’s colors, textures, odors, and the tiny familiar living things that it contains. Students observe living animals such as earthworms and pillbugs and them add them to their terrariums. The observation continues as the students begin to notice things that are changing in their terrariums. |
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Tree Homes
(Grades Pre K–1)
Tree Homes emphasizes the vital role that
trees play on Earth with the different animals that
live in them. Through observation of real trees,
dramatic role-play and engaging activates, students
gain a deeper appreciation for trees and the animals
that inhabit them. Observation, describing and
comparing, creative- and logical- thinking, sorting
and classifying, and problem solving are skills that
are utilized and practiced while investigating into
the concepts of animal shelter, habitats, parenting,
tree structure, animal features and behaviors. |
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