So many what-if scenarios come to light: What if the Soviets' moon program had worked? What if Buran had not been canceled? If the USSR hadn't disintegrated, would the race still be going?

This a great place to learn how they explore for under water life from the mini sub to the incredible pictures.
Everyone will enjoy this web experience.

I've visited the guest portal twice with my children and they love it! Being able to choose what they want to observe and the correct exposure allows them to feel that they are actually controlling the telescope. Very fun, quick and easy to use. The most difficult part is waiting for the image. :)

Our preschool students loved this resource as most of them have never visited a rainforest before. We had fun learning about the 'Great Kapok Tree' and its cultural significance.

The Splendor of Diamonds is a wonderfully crafted educational masterpiece that captivates students with the wonders of geology and the intricacies of a dynamically changing the Earth.

The aircraft featured are different, not the typical fare. Students and teachers will find this useful and interesting. I would use it every time I visit!

This is a great lesson for explaining to children the effects of water/oceans on the weather. Living on the Gulf Coast kids always think of the ocean as a place that only brings in hurricanes. With the information provided it has opened their eyes to concepts that adults sometimes take for granted. I found the information about early trade routes very interesting, I never really thought about early explorers not having motors for the ships they were traveling on, they used the currents and that is why it took longer to travel from one location to another.

As a homeschooling family, we are always working on projects/resources together. Everyone in our family loved doing this. From the youngest to the oldest! I am very impressed with this. We ALL learned something from it. Thank you so much!

I was extremely impressed with this source about worm watching. My son had a blast watching the worms and learning about why we need them and the importance the roles of every creature, even worms has on our planet.

As a homeschool mom, this resource was very helpful and easy to use. My child enjoyed studying worms and the good they do for our soil. I think the more we know about how all things work together in our environment the better we will teach our children to take better care of it! This is a good resource to begin to understand how important the smaller things in life are and how they relate to us.

My daughter learned from this same curriculum in her 1st grade class. She was much more interested in the subject as a whole because she got to participate in planting, watering and watching her sunflower grow. A year later she still has her sunflower and can still tell me all about it.

What a great idea to teacher children about sunflowers. The teaching supplements are great. I try and do a project every year with my children and we will be doing sunflowers next summer!!

This is a wonderful resource. It makes learning about sunflowers fun. It gives step by step instructions for growing sunflowers. I think I enjoyed this as much as the children.

I thought this activity was very effective. The children enjoyed making the web and it provided the perfect forum to talk and listen to each other! We were able to do this activity outside where we could feel the grass, hear the birds, and get a true experience of nature!

As an educator at a local Audubon Center, I was able to incorporate the information and activities into our Pond Probe program. We included the terminology (omnivorous, herbivorous) into the pond lesson and added the Web of Life game as a culmination to our pond activity. As our web radiated out from the 'sun' the students were able to get a clear picture of how all creatures are dependent on each other.

This resources is an interactive, hands-on activity to engage students in learning about food webs, interdependency, needs and the sun. The activity is excellent and there is a lot of background information provide to best teach these concepts.

We came across this when we were looking up information on Pandas. We got to see Tai Shan getting cozy with his mommy. The kids just thought it was a riot. So now when we want to know more about animals we have a chance to see them move around in real time hundreds of miles away. What an educational and fun experience it is. Thank you National Zoo for this opportunity to let us view your wild collection.

The webcams are such a good way to watch the animal interactions, to watch the young ones grow such as tia shan. i have viewed him almost daily since day one and i feel as though i have grown right along with him.

I really like everything I saw on the animal cam. My son thought it was a neat way to view other animals that we do not normally see. I will recommend this site to other homeschoolers.

The interactive conservation walks are great for lower school students to learn about the world around them. Information about the ph levels of soil, seasonal changes of trees, and frogs in the woods are all topics that help young students appreciate their environment.

I used this resource (specifically the one on seasonal changes in the temperate forest) in my elementary classroom. I set up the virtual field trip on a computer and my students were able to visit it if they finished work early or during down time. They loved it! The animation is colorful and interesting and really holds their interest. I like all of the information; it is written in a way that is accessible to my young students, but still covers a ton. This resource also features a quiz, real world photos of the material covered, and outside links for the teacher. Love it!

A Walk in the Forest is a wonderful way for children and adults alike to learn practical ways of investigating and how to pay attention to details in everyday life. This interactive lesson/game teaches the basics of soil analysis and WHY certain trees grow in specific areas and types of soil. This is a wonderful tool to use as a science lab, or educational summer fun. This lesson has excited me to take advantage of walks and hikes with my own children. If we pay attention to what is around us, we can learn so much!

Great online introduction for students to use on learning about GPS technology, could be a great resource to utilize on a internet scavenger hunt or a web quest.

GPS: A New Constellation provides a very good introduction to the GPS system. It does a good job of explaining the need for GPS, a basic explanation of how the system works and its applications. The language is non-technical and this would make it easier for the general population to understand.

Thanks

Good activity that includes every student being involved and able to contribute. The only problem may be the use of popcorn since my 6th graders always want to sample any food item (despite its location on the ground).

This exercise is well designed and worked very well as written. I find a lot of wonderful lessons on the web but I usually have to modify them to make them work. When I don't modify, I usually sorry! But this exercise worked perfectly without any additional work. A great time saver! I printed the pictures and laminated them to use over.

It is good for the students to process the unfamiliar words and also work with the data. Great for understanding graphs.

I can't wait to use these when we get back into Space again! The pics pop! The colors will hold the kids attention and the info is so much better than just a plain old text book! Thank you!

I am going to use this resource to give my students a better understanding of the goals and challenges of the Apollo missions to the Moon. This will be used in our celebration of the 50th anniversary of NASA.

I found this site to add something to our study of space. It was interesting to look at after seeing the movie "Fly Me to the Moon" and "Apollo 13."

I am anxious to do this again with my students. With budget restraints and being several hundred miles away this was a awesome way of taking my student there without the cost or headache.

This is such a great opportunity! Imagine your students being able to have a tour of this wonderful museum, right from their classroom.

I was able to visit this museum as a child and it made a lasting impression on me.

What an amazing tool to use when teaching about space and planets. My kids loved and I mean LOVED all of the great pictures. It was amazing to see them “ooohh” and “aahhh” and say “come look, you have to see this one” to get them so enthusiastic about learning is such a wonderful thing. Thank you Smithsonian for all of the wonderful resources you’ve made available to us! It allows us to teach our kids in such a way that brings the subject alive and it makes learning fun. Thank you. In case you couldn’t tell I highly recommend this to enhance their learning of planets and space.

This resource is great! I have taken my class to the Air and Space Museum and we participated in this tour and he kids LOVED it! I have used some of the related resources with my 6th graders before we went on the field trip and they are really helpful. These resources are particularly good because you can modify them to match what you are doing with your class (no matter the grade).

A powerful lesson on a weather pattern changing event is directly related to changes in the marine food web and the impact of the food web change on people who live near the Pacific Ocean. Statements made are based upon data presented with hot links. Students are lead step by step through a process that transforms an intimidating data set into a meaningful graph. I can’t believe my fortune, finding this complete lesson between my environmental science unit and my weather unit!

I used much of this information to journal birds with 6th grade visual art students. Each chose a bird indigenous to Ohio to journal and sketch. We looked at John Jame Audubon and Genevieve Estelle Jones' work. Our art told a story of the bird, it's habitat, food and habits.

This resource is really well-designed for students of all ages who want to keep a nature journal as part of a class project. There are great ideas here on keeping a nature journal using Smithsonian archives, with topics ranging from birds to tigers. Experienced scientists and explorers share their ideas for how to enliven the journal (include found objects such as feathers). Although designed for middle schoolers, the idea can be implemented at all levels from Kindergarten through college with a little tweaking. Nicely done!

The Smithsonian's educational resources are such a joy to us. We began nature journaling not too long ago and my son and I have learned so much. We did a lesson on birds and my son and I can now spot different types of birds that we see. We added bird songs to the lesson, so now when we hear a bird, we can also identify it before we see it. What a wonderful resource! Thank you, Smithsonian!

Wow! This is an incredible resource for my homeschooling children. I was very impressed with the varied information on each animal. The details were very educational from interactive photos to audio clips.

This site is a wonderful resource for my 5th graders. Every year we complete a research project on North American animals and their habitats. This site helps students find the information they need while accommodating multiple learning abilities.

Both my students and I loved using this for my Biology class. A quick and easy source useful for teaching North American mammals, whether you are looking for specific species or a family.
I found its teacher's resource link especially helpful for creating lesson plans.

My daughter thoroughly enjoyed this lesson on Ben Franklin and is waiting for the next storm to move through. lol. But in all honesty, this not only explains his beliefs and ideas but him as a person. It makes children and/or adults realize that he was just a person too. To quote Mr. Franklin "One day Mr. Franklin was asked why he failed 2000 tries to make a light bulb? He told this gentleman that he hadn't failed, he had just learned 2000 ways not to make a light bulb." Ben Franklin is a very important and a highlight of American History and should be discussed more in a classroom setting to give him the character that he deserves.

I am always looking for ways to provide cross curricular activities, and this is one that provides great activities! I love the static electricity one, very simply to do with easy to find materials.

I have always been fascinated by Ben Franklin. This lesson illustrates the depth and breadth of his interests and accomplishments. I liked the lesson with the portraits of Franklin's friends. I would love to have the students draw a portrait of themselves and include objects that emphasize their interests. The lesson about static electricity is very effective, and I found it very effective to set up different stations in the room to show how electricity can be created. This is a lesson which I will continue to incorporate into my thematic unit on Franklin for many years.