3.4: Adaptations may be behavioral or physical (a partial, lower-grade…

Your Senses: How Does Your Body Know? Grade 4

Map the most sensitive spots on your skin, find the blind spot in each eye, lose the flavour of a jelly bean by pinching your nose, and build an owl ear. Four lessons on how senses gather information and the brain makes sense of it.

• Where is your skin most sensitive? 45–60 min

  Students use a bent paper clip to touch the skin with one point or two, and find the smallest gap they can feel as two on the fingertip, palm, back of the hand and forearm. Then they explain why fingertips are built for reading the world.

• Why do you have two eyes? 45–60 min

  Students try to touch a pen cap to a pen tip ten times with one eye covered and ten times with both eyes open, then make a dot vanish into their own blind spot. They explain what two eyes give the brain that one eye can't.

• Can your nose change what you taste? 45–60 min

  With eyes closed and noses pinched, students try to name the flavour of a jelly bean and tell a cube of apple from a cube of potato. Then they let go of their noses and explain why most of what we call taste is really smell.

• How do animals sense what we can't? 60 min

  Students read about whiskers, echolocation and owl ears, build a paper cone 'owl ear' and test whether it helps them find where a sound comes from. Then they define a problem and invent a sensor or tool inspired by an animal.

Winter Science: Ice, Snow and Staying Warm Grades 3–5

Why roads get salted, which mitten really works, how a seal stays warm in icy water, and why a mouse is cosier under the snow than on top of it. Four hands-on lessons on ice, heat and insulation.

• What melts ice fastest? 50–60 min

  Teams sprinkle salt, sugar and sand on identical ice cubes, leave one plain, and measure the meltwater after 20 minutes. Then they use their evidence to explain why road crews spread salt, and why salted ice actually gets colder.

• Which mitten keeps a hand warmest? 50–60 min

  Teams wrap jars of warm water in wool, cotton, foil or nothing, and read a thermometer every 5 minutes to see which loses heat slowest. Then they explain what a mitten really does, and why it doesn't make any heat of its own.

• How do animals stay warm in winter? 50–60 min

  Students put a hand into ice water inside a 'blubber glove' made of shortening between two zip bags, measure the difference with thermometers, and compare a lone cup of warm water with a huddle. Then they argue how blubber, fur, feathers and huddling help animals survive the cold.

• Can snow keep things warm? 60–75 min, including about 40 min outdoors

  Teams build a 'den' for a jar of warm water, leave one on top of the snow and bury one underneath, and compare temperatures after 30 minutes. They also probe the snow with thermometers, then explain why voles, grouse and bears spend winter under the snow. A no-snow version uses a freezer and a snow stand-in.

Printable practice for 3.4

• Your Senses: How Does Your Body Know? workbook included with the unit

  1 word wall, 1 English-support page, 1 practice page, 1 reading, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

• Winter Science: Ice, Snow and Staying Warm workbook included with the unit

  2 readings, 1 word wall, 1 English-support page, 1 practice page, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

• Flowers, Fruit and Seeds: How Plants Make More Plants workbook included with the unit

  3 English-support pages, 3 practice pages, 3 readings, 1 word wall, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

• How Your Body Works workbook included with the unit

  4 English-support pages, 4 practice pages, 4 readings, 1 word wall, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

• Keep It Cool: Ice, Insulation and Staying Comfortable workbook included with the unit

  1 word wall, 1 English-support page, 1 practice page, 1 reading, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

• Groundhog Day Shadow Science free pack, written for Canada; the skill matches

  2 mini books, 1 reading, 1 cut-and-paste page, 1 assessment, with answer keys. Free sample.

Need just this outcome? Build a custom pack from these pages, with its answer key, in about a minute. Custom packs come with All-access and school licences.