Third grade students have finished learning about rocks, soils and minerals.  The students have experimented with which soil hold more water, which type of soil is best for growing pea plants, and most importantly the importance of soil to plants!  The kids should know the three layers of soil and the
importance of each.  The students are currently learning about earth cycles – review of day and night, the moon phases, the
seasons, and the tides. 

In science resource, we are also focusing on measurement with metric units – length (meter and cm), mass (gram), temperature (degrees Celsius), and volume (liter and mL). 

Have your kids estimate lengths around the house – especially when cooking! 

Some wonderful websites are:

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/ECT/the_book/index.html - hands on astronomy for kids – great site!

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/java/MoonPhase.html - an pretty good animation of the moon phases. 

http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system_level2/song.html - a song for each season J

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/env99/env031.htm - a simple explanation for younger kids – the reason for the seasons. 

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