ingridscience

Put a magnet under the card below the car or cardboard car/boat/luge etc, and move the magnet to drag the vehicle along, following the track.

Discuss the pushes and pulls: the magnet pulls on the vehicle through the board to hold it to the board. As the magnet is moved the vehicle is pushed and pulled around the track.

Students can design their own race tracks.
For easy race track switching, make it on a piece of paper and clip to a slim plastic clipboard. Note that a strong bar magnet is required to make it work.

I am giving you animal life cycle cards.
There are 4 different animals in your set, with four different stages of their life cycle.
Try to place the cards into four separate life cycles on your mat, so the arrows link each stage in the life cycle - start with the egg and cycle through two stages to the adult.
Some will be easy as you have seen them before, some you’ll have to guess. Don’t worry about getting it right, but look at the variety of life that goes through metamorphosis.

Discussion:
Barnacle is a crustacean, related to shrimp and crabs. Barnacle egg grows into a larva, which swims in the ocean. The larva develops into a cypris, which settles on a rock and metamorphoses to form the adult.
Crustaceans: some release fertilised eggs into the water, others hold on to the eggs until they hatch incl. barnacles. Larva called nauplius.
Jellyfish: Egg grows into a swimming larva, which attaches to a rock. Metamorphosis to form a polyp. Young jellyfish bud off. Eggs fertilized outside the parent. Larva called planula.
Starfish/sea star: The eggs grow into a swimming larva, which attaches to a rock, goes through metamorphosis to form a juvenile starfish, which grows into an adult. Eggs fertilized outside the parent. Larva called bracholaria.

Plankton
Show plankton images e.g. from https://plankton.photography/
Show larvae image and find ones like barnacle and starfish larva.
They are tiny and drift with the ocean currents. Plankton are food for other larger animals.
The adults make many young so that some survive to the next stage.

Lay thick paper/card over the magnets.
Pile the pins or shapes onto the card, and arrange.
They can see how tall they can build the sculpture/what shapes they can make etc.

Hang pins or shapes from magnets.
Make shadow shapes with them.

Remove the backing from the contact paper and tape it, sticky side up, to the table in front of a student.
Students stick hexagons of tissue paper to the contact paper, arranged as a honeycomb (or not). Tell them that once the tissue paper touches the contact paper it is impossible to get up again without tearing it.

It can be hung in a window as "stained-glass" art.

Give each table group a selection of rocks with containers.
Explain that they will mimic how rain, flowing rivers or crashing waves interact with rocks.

Students to add their rock/pottery pieces to the container, screw on the cap, then vigorously shake - they can pass it around. They are mimicking water hitting the rocks, and wearing them away - the process of weathering.

Compare the different rocks and how fast they are worn away.
The igneous rocks (granite, quartz) are very hard and will not wear down at all.
The sedimentary rocks (sandstone, mudstone, chalk) and the pottery will rapidly break into smaller pieces. The water may even become cloudy from fine particles.

All rocks are weathered, each at very different rates - some rapidly and some over millions of years.
They are all worn into small particles of sand and mud.
These particles are then moved away in the process of Erosion (by water, or wind, or ice).