“Bright Minds Share the Light” is a nice collection of teacher information and student activities about Light and Shadows. The resources are written collaboratively by Valerie Barnes, Louis Cheng and Louis Cheng at the Calgary Science School. Topics include : What Is Light?, Where Does Light Come From?,  What Can Light Do? and How Do We See? Students will learn about colours, energy, reflection, and the structure of the eyes. The website is aimed at elementary school students. The lessons are very well organized in a nice table of content. I strongly recommend that you look at this site if you are teaching about energy or light.

“Inquiry in Action” is a project of the American Chemical Society and in composed of a Guide to Inquiry Investigations in Physical Science. It includes and entirely free PDF book about investigation in elementary school science. It is a resource of guided, inquiry-based activities that covers basic chemistry concepts along with the process of scientific investigation. It includes activities about the physical properties and physical change in solids and liquids, dissolving solids, liquids, and gases, chemical changes, states of matter and density. The document is made for the US curriculum and it includes links with teaching standards in all the 50 states. You can download each part separately or you can download the entire document as a PDF.

This Flash animation is a great way to teach electrical circuits to elementary school students. It will help students make the link between components of actual circuits and electrical symbols. After learning what each symbol means, the student can then draw circuit diagrams by dragging symbols of components. It is very simple, but exactly what is needed for elementary school students.

This simple Flash animation about the states of matter will help the student visualize particles, as the temperature is increase. The temperature vs. time graph helps the student visualize the “plateau” when there is a change of phase (at the melting point and the boiling point). There are also arrows to show how changes of phase are called (melting, freezing, boiling and condensing). Unfortunately, sublimation is missing.

“Physics4kids” is yet another website of the “4kids” family. It presents physics concept in a language that most students at the end of elementary school will be able to understand. There are quizzes throughout the website as the student get acquainted with the concepts to test their knowledge. The site presents the concept of motion including simple movements and complex movements, forces, acceleration, mass, lever, vectors, the three laws of motion, instantaneous velocity, transfer of energy and work. Even as an adult, if all of this is just a big nightmare of your past when you were in high school, you can relax and read through it. You will realize that it is not that bad.

Other topics covered include : thermodynamics (energy transfer, expansion, heat, temperatures, first and second laws of thermodynamics, enthalpy and entropy), optics (electromagnetic radiation, visible light, light structure, reflection, refraction, lenses and lasers), electricity and magnetism (charges, conductors, electric fields, magnetic fields, current, resistance, Faraday’s law, Coulomb’s law, magnet and AC/DC power) and modern physics (nuclear physics, quantum physics, radioactivity, fission, fusion and reactors).

If you are teaching the properties of fluids and the properties of air at the elementary level, the web site “Air Travelers” will certainly be a good source of ideas then planning your lessons. It will provide you activities to explore buoyancy, the properties of hot air, the properties of helium and the effect of wind on a balloon. There is also a guide in PDF to build a hot hair balloon with all the details. There is a teacher guide and well as a section providing the science background information to truly understand hot air balloons. In the gallery section, you can watch pictures and videos of hot air balloons.