Thermal energy activities

Looking for engaging ideas for teaching forms of energy? Look no further! These activities will help your students learn in a meaningful way.

Science experiments are such a fun activity in the upper elementary classroom. This blog post shares information about heat experiments that I did with my class, including lots of photographs documenting the activity.

So, I'll be the first to admit that science is just not my subject....I think I'm fairly decent at teaching it, but I just don't love it. Fortunately, I think I'm pretty good at tricking my kids into thinking otherwise by acting so excited about all the "neat" things we learn about. One of our units we do each year is heat--fun! fun! :) If you haven't noticed already, I am ALL about flipbooks and foldables! I LOVE them! It allows the kiddos to take notes without the torture of....well, just…

While we were looking over the instructions for a solar water purifier on E is for Explore! I noticed they also had a suggestion for using solar energy to blow-up a balloon. All it called for was an empty 2 liter bottle, a small balloon, and a sunny day. We had sun, and an empty bottle (once we poured the rest of our tonic water into our "purifier"). We didn't have a small balloon, but we cut the neck off of a larger one, stretched it over the bottle, and called it good. It's a nice, simple…

Experiments, lessons, and activities to teach kids about thermal energy and how heat is transferred by conduction, convection, and radiation. . Hands-on and engaging ideas for any elementary classroom!

We're supposed to have sun for the rest of the week, but it's never good to take chances with the weather. So, when the sun came out today, we hit the ground running with three solar thermal projects at once. This time, instead of working with complicated, photovoltaic, solar panels, we experimented with harnessing the heat of the sun to expand air, purify water, and turn a pinwheel. Each project was simple to put together, and provided easily observable results, but with lots of little…

Science is easy with this fun heat conduction experiment from the book Air is Not Oxygen!

Thermal Energy ~ Anchor Chart * Jungle Academy

This complete unit on thermal energy and heat transfer will help students understand the particle movement in different temperatures.

Science Teaching Ideas for Elementary and Middle School Science with science lessons, science activities, and science units for NGSS and Utah SEEd