It’s October already–the air is getting a little cooler, the leaves are changing color, and the number of daylight hours is decreasing. Some birds have left for their winter homes, and others are arriving or passing through. And, of course, the World Series is just around the corner and football season is underway!
What a great time of year to be a science teacher! There are so many opportunities to connect science with these events, and SciLinks has lots of websites that can help to make these connections. I searched the database to come up with a few examples:
Leaves
What Tree Is It? is a dichotomous key that is easy to use at any age.
This lesson at Look at Those Leaves will have students observe, measure, and sort tree leaves along with examining leaves individually, in groups, and in relationship to the entire tree.
How Leaves Change Color describes the reasons behind the beautiful fall foliage.
Seasons
Astronomy with a Stick is an online project to help your students understand how the positions of the sun and the earth affect the daylight hours. Free registration allows your class to interact with other classes worldwide! The directions say for students to use newspapers to get the time of sunrise each day, but the U.S. Naval Observatory’s website lets you enter a location and date to get this information!
What Causes the Seasons? has many diagrams to explain the reasons for the seasons.
The fall was my favorite time to do a comparison study of trees and leaves and to explore the effects of temperature on the behavior of living things. What other investigations are your favorites for the fall?