Pushes, Pulls and Magnets
Why a rolling ball always stops, whether a magnet can pull through a table, and how far a paper clip will jump. Three lessons on the pushes and pulls that start, stop and steer things.
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Every unit and lesson for Third Class, each a real question your class tests with everyday materials. Same class as Grade 3 in the US, Grade 3 in Canada, Year 4 in the UK, Year 3 in Australia, Year 4 in New Zealand, Grade 3 in South Africa, Class 3 in India.
Why a rolling ball always stops, whether a magnet can pull through a table, and how far a paper clip will jump. Three lessons on the pushes and pulls that start, stop and steer things.
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.
Why your heart races when you run, what happens to your lunch, how your arm bends and where germs hide. Students take their own pulse, build a model gut and a card elbow, and run a handwashing fair test with glitter 'germs'. Everyday materials, no winter, works in any country.
A schoolyard survey with string squares and hand lenses, sorting animals by their features, life cycles from caterpillar to butterfly, and who can live in which habitat. Students look, count and sketch but never collect or harm. Works in any climate and any country, in a garden, on pavement or in a desert.
Why salt makes ice melt faster, which wrap keeps a drink coldest, how a seal and a fennec fox each keep their body temperature steady, and how to build a cool box that beats the heat. Four hands-on lessons that start from a freezer and work in any climate.
Steer a beam around a wall with mirrors, find out why a pencil looks broken in water, and split white light into the colours hiding inside it. Three hands-on lessons on reflection, refraction and colour that build on shadows and work in any climate.
What is a flower really for? Is a tomato a fruit? How can a seed travel without legs? Three hands-on lessons on pollination, fruits and seeds, and seed dispersal, from a flower you can take apart, through foods you can cut open, to seed models you can drop, blow and float. Nothing is tasted, and it works in any climate.
Where the stars go in the daytime, why they wheel across the sky all night and why Orion is a winter sight in Canada but a summer one in Australia. Students sort real star data, spin and orbit as human models and read a printed sky chart. No materials needed: just the printed sheets, in either hemisphere.
The steps of the scientific method, taught as a cycle rather than a recipe. Students sort testable questions, inspect unfair tests and plan a fair one, turn a page of practice data into a mean, a bar graph and a claim, and then walk the whole cycle with a real case: Ignaz Semmelweis and handwashing in 1840s Vienna. Nothing to buy: every lesson runs on printed sheets.
A water-drop journey game around eight stations of the room, a 100-square model of where all of Earth's water really is, from USGS data, and a sealed bag of water on a sunny window that shows the Sun driving the whole cycle. Two of the three lessons need nothing but printed sheets.
Why does a grey cygnet grow into a white swan, why are puppies in one litter different colours, and why does a bean plant grown in the dark come up tall and yellow? Three lessons with nothing to buy: students match drawn family cards, make a living bar graph of pea cards beside Gregor Mendel's real counts, and walk a case-file trail of plants and animals changed by where they live.
Four no-materials lessons on what helps living things survive: reading fossil cards from Antarctica to the Himalaya to work out what places were like long ago, a predator-and-prey game on why animals live in groups, a camouflage hunt on printed bark and sand, and case files on what happens when a habitat changes. Everything runs on printed sheets.
Science and English together, for English learners (CEFR A2–B1). Why is the Vietnamese nón lá shaped like a cone? Students build paper hats, test them in 'monsoon rain' and 'midday sun', and find the best shape for a rice farmer.
Whose foot is the right ruler? How long is a minute, really? Is a kilogram of feathers lighter than a kilogram of rocks? Four lessons where students measure length, time and mass with real tools, then use their own data to settle an argument.
Which mat is really the biggest? Does the same fence always hold the same garden? Can the same rug need more edging? Four lessons where students tile, stretch rope and chalk the schoolyard to find out that area and perimeter measure different things.
Is half always the same size? Where does three-quarters stand? Why is 3/4 + 2/4 not 5/8? Who jumped further, 1.4 m or 1.35 m? Four hands-on lessons where students fold, stand on a giant number line, measure recipes and measure their own jumps to make sense of fractions and decimals.
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