Thursday, February 15, 2007

Snow Days give time to Explore!

Hope everyone is now resting from digging out. It gave me time to do some more exploring of the web and finding great resources for you. This new one targets K-8 students in the area of nature.

Exploring Nature Educational Resource is a site that is FREE and features a searchable database of more than 1,000 animals categorized by classification (mammals, birds, etc.) by trait (scaverngers, carnivores, etc.) by habitat (rainforest animals, desert animals) and by geographic location. Additional resource databases include plants, trees, biomes and the human body. It also has nature movies, answers to weird questions, and an "Ask the Zoo Vet" section.

The teacher section includes lesson plans, activities, and mini-lectures on such topics as: habitat studies, erosion, classification, food webs, and life cycles.

While the site is free, you must login into the site to use it. PTS has created a username and password for each of the elementary schools and middle schools. Both are exactly the same. They all start with the word portage and then have your schools' two-digit abbreviation as follows: portageay, portagece, portagefe, and etc. Remember you use the same for the username and the password. Please give this out to your students to use at school and at home as well.

How do you find the site? It is on the Online Resource page on the PTS website. Look for this logo:

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