Teaching landforms in your classroom? If you’re searching for a quick and easy way to help students learn about landforms—without needing lots of extra supplies—you’ve come to the right place! This post shares simple sorting and compare/contrast activities perfect for introducing landforms. All you’ll need are some landform flashcards or pictures, making this activity both fun and hassle-free!
Materials
All you need for this simple learning activity is some good landform flashcards or pictures. I recommend downloading and printing my landform three-part cards. Optionally, you can also purchase my water features three-part cards. You’ll receive high-quality illustrations of each landform on printable flashcards, plus you’ll support my blog with your purchase!
Or, if you’re looking for EVEN MORE landforms materials for your lessons, I recommend checking out my complete Landforms Unit. It includes the landforms flashcards, a printable version of the directions in this blog post, and additional activities and printable materials.
There’s no need to scramble to put together the perfect landforms lesson – I’ve already created it for you! This set includes all the printable materials you need for studying landforms in your classroom or homeschool!
Life’s beginning varies a lot among mammals. We can group mammals into three main categories based on how their babies come into the world. The main types of mammals are called monotremes, marsupials, and placentals.
A Note For Teachers: If you’re an educator planning to teach types of mammals, great learning resources are key to deepening understanding! I think you and your students will love my complete Mammals Unit, which you can also find within my huge Vertebrates Bundle (plus you’ll support my blog with your purchase! ❤️ )
The echidna (left) and platypus (right) are monotremes.
Most mammals give birth to live babies instead of laying eggs. However, there are a couple of exceptions: platypuses and echidnas. They belong to a special group called monotremes. Even though they are unusual, monotremes, like the platypus, still provide milk for their young after they hatch. Monotremes are found in Australia and surrounding islands.
Marsupials
Kangaroo (left), koala (middle), and the extinct thylacine (right) are all marsupials.
Marsupials are another interesting type of mammal. They have a very short gestation period – that is the amount of time they are inside their mom’s belly. When they are born, they are very tiny and need a lot of care. They crawl into a pouch or open area on their mother’s belly, where they stay warm, safe, and can drink milk while they grow. A famous example of this is a kangaroo with a joey in its pouch. The kangaroo, like most marsupials, lives in Australia. South America is also home to many marsupials, and there is even one marsupial in North America: the opossum.
Placentals
Placental mammals are a large group, including deer (left), bats (middle), and prairie dogs (right), as well as many others.
The largest group of mammals is called placentals. They give birth to live babies after a longer gestation period. A special organ called the placenta helps give these mammals the nutrients they need while still in the womb. Placental mammals are born more developed than marsupial babies. Some, like baby deer (called fawns), can even stand up and start walking the same day they are born. Placentals are found in many habitats all around the world.
Learn about mammals with Wild Earth Lab
Check out my Mammals Unit! Learn about monotremes, marsupials, placental mammals, and much more!
If you enjoyed learning about the types of mammals in this post, I know you will love using my other earth and environmental science materials in your classroom!
Ferner, K., Schultz, J. A., & Zeller, U. (2017). Comparative anatomy of neonates of the three major mammalian groups (monotremes, marsupials, placentals) and implications for the ancestral mammalian neonate morphotype. Journal of anatomy, 231(6), 798-822. Available via Wiley Online Library: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joa.12689
This week, my students and I took a field trip to a local creek. Getting outside to make observations in nature is one of my favorite hands-on ways to learn about science and the natural world! Ponds, creeks, and wetlands are some of the best places to do this. These aquatic areas are teaming with life and activity – there is so much to watch, listen to, and wonder about. Like most living creatures, we humans are naturally drawn to water sources. Being outside with my students at the creek this week got me thinking more about ponds, streams, and wetlands, and their important role in all kinds of ecosystems...
A stream in Northern Wisconsin is home to a variety of plant and animal species
Perhaps you have noticed that some of the best places in your area to see birds, plants, and other wildlife are near water! Where you find water you usually find an abundance of life! All plants need water to perform photosynthesis, the process plants use to make their own food. A healthy ecosystem will have a healthy food web! An ecosystem with many different plants will attract herbivores or animals that eat plants. You might have seen some herbivores around ponds or streams in your area, such as plant-eating species of fish, birds, and insects. A thriving herbivore population will, in turn, attract predators, or animals that hunt and eat other animals. You may notice predators such as larger fish species like pike and walleye, as well as otters, herons, kingfishers, spiders, and dragonflies. Decomposers, like mushrooms and earthworms, also thrive in moist environments. It is no surprise that water featureslike streams, ponds, and wetlands are the lively, bustling centers of many ecosystems!
Loons are predators of fishMushrooms are decomposers found in many ecosystems
I became very familiar with aquatic ecosystemhealthwhile collecting field samples for an aquatic ecology laboratory several years ago. While going out and collecting samples from streams, ponds, and rivers all over Colorado, I quickly learned that not all aquatic ecosystems are equal. I saw and studied all kinds of aquatic ecosystems – from streams that were little more than stagnant ditches on the sides of roads, to roaring mountain rivers overflowing with spring snowmelt. I visited remote beaver meadows miles from the nearest dirt road, and also popular lakes in national parks that host thousands of hikers, fishers, and sight-seers every year. I studied mountain springs that bubbled out of the ground looking as clean and clear as tap water and also streams where the water flowed bright orange, polluted with runoff from mining sites. It didn’t take long for me to start noticing some other big differences between these contrasting aquatic ecosystems…
As I visited these places, I would listen, touch, smell, and look – and notice the differences. I heard the sounds of many songbirds or the sounds of nearby highways. I felt the squishy, moss-covered river banks between my toes as I waded bare-foot in remote streams, or I felt the hardened plant-less dirt under my wader boots on riverbanks where too many boots from too many visitors had over-compacted the soil. I smelled the earthy scents of decaying leaves and wildflowers, or the stench of manure from a nearby herd of cattle grazing on the sweet riparian vegetation. I counted the number of native plants or the number of invasive species.
A pond near Buena Vista, ColoradoMaking observations of an ecosystem
Ponds, streams, and wetlands are the heart of many ecosystems. If these water features are unhealthy, the whole ecosystem will decline. Take away a clean and plentiful source of water, and the vegetation will suffer, sending ripple effects through the local populations of herbivores, predators, and decomposers.
Consequently, these vital water features are also a great indicator of ecosystem health. If something is not right in an ecosystem, you can often observe signs of poor health in the streams, ponds, and wetlands. An unhealthy ecosystem cannot support a diverse community of plants, herbivores, predators, and decomposers. Scientists monitor ponds, streams, and wetlands due to their importance to animals and plants (and humans) in a variety of environments, and also because the symptoms of ecosystem imbalance are often quite visible there.
A variety of animal and plant species that are found around healthy ponds and wetlands
Continue to part 2 to learn how to recognize the signs of healthy aquatic ecosystems wherever you go!
If you are looking for ways to teach kids or young students about aquatic ecosystem health, you can download and print the free nature journal page for kids, about pond ecosystems or purchase the Pond Ecology Bundle on Etsy!
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Author’s note: As a master’s student who works with water, this is an exciting topic for me to write about! Water is a vital resource that needs careful management in the Mountain West region of the United States. Mountain region watersheds are expected to face climate change-related challenges due to decreasing winter snowpack, changing stream flows, and growing downstream human settlements. Understanding our watersheds and the challenges they are facing is very important, not just for scientists but for everyone. It is never too early or too late to start learning about environmental processes like the water cycle that make life possible for all beings. This is truly a force of nature that impacts all of us, regardless of where we live or our occupations. We all use water, and we all can find ways to use water more sustainably, work to ensure everyone can access reliable and clean water resources, and protect aquatic ecosystems (which provide some cool ecosystem services… this will be a topic for another post soon!)! The water cycle is so huge and important, I’ve decided to make a whole series of posts about it. My goal in writing this first part is to overview the water cycle in a straightforward but detailed way – not just for science students but for anyone and everyone who is curious about our Earth’s water cycle. In the second part, I plan to introduce some of the ways humans impact the water cycle, and steps we can take to better use and manage our water resources and ecosystems. I hope this two-part post provides you with some useful background information about how the water cycle works and how we interact with the water cycle. I’ve also included some free digital learning resources related to the water cycle, linked at the bottom of this article!
Ever wondered what keeps our streams flowing? Or why rivers don’t run out of water? Or where does the water bubbling out of the ground at natural springs come from? The answer to all these questions actually begins with our sun! The sun is like an engine, providing the necessary energy to drive the water cycle. The water cycle isan ongoing process of moving water from the oceans to the land and back.
The water cycle begins over our oceans, where the energy from our sun causes huge amounts of water to evaporate every day. When water evaporates, it doesn’t disappear – it becomes water vapor: water in gas form rather than liquid form. Ocean water can evaporate, but salts in the ocean cannot. Because salt cannot evaporate, evaporation separates freshwater out of the ocean. Freshwater is non-ocean water that is usable by land plants and animals, including humans! Evaporation is an important Earth process that makes human life possible because it separates the freshwater from the saltwater.
The sun fuels the water cycle by providing the energy for water to evaporate
As the evaporated water vapor rises up in the atmosphere, it cools and condenses, or starts forming tiny liquid droplets. As larger droplets form, they fall from the clouds as precipitation, such as rain or snow. Most precipitation will fall directly back into the ocean. However, sometimes clouds that form over the ocean will move over a continent and precipitation falls on the land. When rain falls on the land, some of it flows over the surface of the land, which we call runoff. Little streams may flow into larger streams and rivers, or temporarily be stored in non-moving bodies of water like ponds and lakes. Any water on the earth’s surface, including streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, and oceans, is called surface water. Ultimately, all surface water will do one of three things: evaporate again, flow all the way back to the ocean, or infiltrate…
Precipitation falls over the Rocky Mountains, beginning its long journey back to the oceans.
To infiltrate,in other words, means to seep into the ground. When water infiltrates, it fills the tiny gaps in the soils and rocks below our feet! This water is called groundwater! In the water cycle, water may infiltrate into the ground at any point between where it falls on the land as precipitation and when it flows back into the ocean. Like surface water, groundwater also moves or flows, but much more slowly than surface water. Some groundwater bubbles back out of the ground onto the surface in a spring or a gaining stream: a stream that is fed by groundwater rather than runoff. Plants will also take up groundwater through their roots and release it back into the air as water vapor through the tiny pores in their leaves, in a special type of evaporation called transpiration.
So far, we’ve looked at water in liquid and vapor forms. But what about water in solid form such as ice and snow? It turns out ice and snow play an important part in the water cycle too. When snow falls on land, it can build up in one place, or accumulate. When temperatures increase, such as in springtime, the snow that built up through the winter will melt and flow into our surface and groundwater. In certain cold and snowy areas, such as in tall mountains or near the poles, snow accumulates faster than it melts. This forms glaciers and ice sheets: long-lasting bodies of ice, made from compacted snow. Most of the fresh water on our planet is currently stored as ice in glaciers, ice sheets, and snow! Scientists in the field of snow hydrology study these important stored waters!
Glaciers, such as this one near Anchorage, Alaska, are an important place where fresh water is stored in the water cycle
Saltwater, like ocean water, is toxic to humans and land plants and animals. All the water we drink, bathe in, clean with, and use to grow plants must be freshwater. Freshwater is only a tiny fraction of the water on Earth: about 97.5% of Earth’s water is saltwater. That means only 2.5% of the Earth’s water is freshwater. Of that 2.5% freshwater, most is not usable by humans. Over two-thirds of the Earth’s freshwater is frozen in glaciers, ice caps, and snow, and a little less than a third is groundwater. Surface water like rivers, lakes, and ponds is just a fraction of a percentage of Earth’s total freshwater – and just a tiny part of a fraction of a percentage of Earth’s total water overall! If you’re having trouble visualizing this, check out thefree at-home activity guide to help you and your child or students visualize the percentages of freshwater from home in the kitchen or bathtub!
Continue to Part 2 of this post about the water cycle – covering the ways humans interact with the water cycle!
Skip to Part 3about the water cycle – covering the role of mountain watersheds!
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