This article highlights resources related to water from the American Museum of Natural History and at-home activities on ice and water.

This site features GIFs, Java applets, MPEGs, and Flash animations that illustrate various forms of precipitation and moisture. They include an animation of air parcels and water vapor colliding with condensation nuclei which results in condensation and cloud formation, an interactive precipitation animation applet that allows the user to set wet and dry bulb temperatures to see if snow, ice, freezing rain, sleet, super cooled droplets, raindrops, or drizzle will fall, an animation of lake effect snow over the Great Lakes, and infrared satellite images of water vapor moving across the US. These resources portray a variety of environments and are suitable for use in lectures, labs, or other teaching activities.

This informational text discusses the unique property of ice - that it floats in liquid water. Students focus on real-world examples and how ice is necessary for life in the polar regions. The text is written at a kindergarten through grade one reading level. This version is a full-color PDF that can be printed, cut and folded to form a book. Each book contains color photographs and illustrations.

This article provides science content knowledge about forces that shape the Earth's surface: erosion by wind, water, and ice, volcanoes, earthquakes, and plate tectonics and how these forces affect Earth's polar regions.

This hands-on activity explores five different forms of erosion (chemical, water, wind, glacier and temperature). Students rotate through stations and model each type of erosion on rocks, soils and minerals. The students record their observations and discuss the effects of erosion on the Earth's landscape. Students learn about how engineers are involved in the protection of landscapes and structures from erosion. Math problems are included to help students think about the effects of erosion in real-world scenarios.

This article provides links to hands-on science activities that could be used in an festival or informal learning event. National standards correlations are provided.

Students explore materials engineering by modifying the material properties of water. Specifically, they use salt to lower the freezing point of water and test it by making ice cream. Using either a simple thermometer or a mechatronic temperature sensor, students learn about the lower temperature limit at which liquid water can exist such that even if placed in contact with a material much colder than 0 degrees Celsius, liquid water does not get colder than 0 °C. This provides students with an example of how materials can be modified (engineered) to change their equilibrium properties. They observe that when mixed with salt, liquid water's lower temperature limit can be dropped. Using salt-ice mixtures to cool the ice cream mixes to temperatures lower than 0 °C works better than ice alone.

This article describes two hands-on lessons to teach elementary and middle school students about ice, glaciers, and climate change in the polar regions.

In this lesson, students will observe, measure, and describe water as it changes state. Students will work in pairs to use writing and illustrations to record their observations of ice melting to water and water freezing to ice.

In this lesson, students will observe, measure, and describe water, chocolate, and margarine as they change state. Students will make observations about the amounts of these materials before and after freezing and melting.

In this issue of the free online magazine, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, explore what the polar regions can teach us about the water cycle and the states and changes of matter. Find lesson plans about the many forms of water, ice, and snow found in the polar regions and how to use science notebooks to integrate literacy and science.

This article highlights children's literature about states of matter, phase changes, the water cycle, and glaciers and icebergs for use in the elementary classroom.

An excellent resource and a teaching guide to use with the book "Winter is Here" by Kevin Henkes.