Investigate a flower's power of marketing by making an imitation flower that successfully signals a bee (or other pollinator of your choice) to visit. Try to determine what characteristics will attract a pollinator to your flower. Also available as an online game.

Students use ultrasonic sensors and LEGO© MINDSTORMS© NXT robots to emulate how bats use echolocation to detect obstacles. They measure the robot's reaction times as it senses objects at two distances and with different sensor threshold values, and again after making adjustments to optimize its effectiveness. Like engineers, they gather and graph data to analyze a given design (from the tutorial) and make modifications to the sensor placement and/or threshold values in order to improve the robot's performance (iterative design). Students see how problem solving with biomimicry design is directly related to understanding and making observations of nature.

Students learn about biomimicry and how engineers often imitate nature in the design of innovative new products. They demonstrate their knowledge of biomimicry by practicing brainstorming and designing a new product based on what they know about animals and nature.

Students construct bird nests and birdhouses. They research birds of their choosing and then design houses that meet the birds' specific needs. It works well to conduct this activity in conjunction with a grades 9-12 woodshop class by partnering the older students with the younger students (but it is not required to do this in order to conduct the activity).

This is a virtual representation of a sound mixer containing pre-looped sounds of animal, insect, and environmental noises. Learners drag the blocks that represent a sound to the tray to create a soundscape. They can click "play" to listen to their creations. This activity requires a computer and headphones or speakers.

In this stills collage produced for Teachers' Domain, see several examples of everyday inventions that were either inspired by nature or are similar in form and function to plants or animals.

Ivy Rutzky, a scientific assistant at the American Museum of Natural History, introduces an activity where learners create a scientific illustration of a monarch butterfly. Learners will discover why scientists prefer to use drawings rather than photographs, as well as learn about butterflies. Learners will practice their research, observation, and drawing skills. Learners are encouraged to follow up this activity by planting their own butterfly gardens.

Students begin by reading Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax" as an example of how overdevelopment can cause long-lasting environmental destruction. Students discuss how to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of human industry. Student teams are asked to serve as natural resource engineers, city planning engineers and civil engineers with the task to replant the nearly destroyed forest and develop a sustainable community design that can co-exist with the re-established natural area.

This activity encourages learners to focus on the natural environment of the Eastern Woodlands before the arrival of European settlers. Learners use pictures, stories and maps to help them understand this environment as they begin an inquiry into how Native Americans lived in woodland regions of the past. As a result, learners should be able to describe some of the natural resources that Native Americans used for their clothing, houses, food, tools and other everyday items. This activity is featured on pp.11-14 of the "One With the Earth: Native Americans and the Natural World" multidisciplinary unit of study for kindergarten through third grade.

This activity introduces learners to Native Americans as people who depended upon nature in the past and continue to emphasize the importance of nature in the present. Learners go outside and use their senses to make observations about their environment. This experience inspires curiosity about nature, helps learners understand that we all need and use natural resources and helps them imagine what it would be like to depend entirely on the natural world. This introductory activity is featured on pp.9-10 of the "One With the Earth: Native Americans and the Natural World" multidisciplinary unit of study for kindergarten through third grade.

In this lesson, students will extend their knowledge of matter and energy cycles in an organism to engineering life cycle assessment of a product. Students will learn about product life cycle assessment and the flow of energy through the cycle, comparing it to the flow of nutrients and energy in the life cycle of an organism.

Which dictates our existence -- our genetic makeup or the environment we grow up in? Kevin Davies offers an update on this long-standing debate, from the NOVA: "Cracking the Code of Life" Web site. ***Access to Teacher's Domain content now requires free login to PBS Learning Media.

In this Bob the Builder(TM)-themed activity, learners go on a nature walk outside and describe what they observe using their senses. Learners discuss everyone's responsibility of taking care of the world. Then, learners use stickers and nature cutouts to create a collage displaying the items they sensed outside, such as wind, sun, flowers, rocks, trees, squirrels, or birds. Learners can also collect small items for the collage while on the nature walk. This activity is featured on page 12 of the "Bob the Builder(TM) äóî Project: Build It" unit of study.

In this activity (under "Activities"), young learners choose a butterfly and then decorate it with different colors. Learners choose from three butterflies to decorate online, or can print out a blank one to color using markers or crayons. Use this activity to explore symmetry in nature.

This free, online article, developed for elementary teachers, describes a Kindergarten polar science, standards aligned, unit centered on The Polar Express developing literacy, math, and science skills.

This activity uses a special paper that can create images with exposure to the Sun. Collect objects of different shapes and sizes and use them to make interesting patterns on your sun print. Most of our objects in the example blocked out the light, because they were opaque. Experiment using semi-opaque objects like mesh or colored glass, or test out reflective and refractive materials to see what images you can get.

In this activity, learners examine ways that Native Americans of the Southwest express their relationship with nature through art. Learners cooperate to create a large weaving and individual rug designs. This activity is featured on pp.30-31 of the "One With the Earth: Native Americans and the Natural World" multidisciplinary unit of study for kindergarten through third grade.