This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 4th grade Science content.

This resource accompanies our Rethink 4th Grade Science course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning. 

In this activity, each collaborative group of students is given a sample of sand and asked to determine how old the sand is by keying out "fossils" (plastic animals) the sand contains. Once each group has dated their sand, groups will work together to stack all the containers of sand in order from oldest to youngest.

In this activity, students acts as a paleontologist as they create and analyze tracks.

Using this website, students can observe photographs of the Grand Canyon today and compare them with photographs of fossils of sea life found in the Grand Canyon. Students are asked to draw conclusions based on their observations of the photographs and a short article with an explanation is provided.

In this activity, students can discuss with a partner or write a paragraph to compare fossils in photographs. Students observe the visible structures in the rock to determine whether they look like something that is alive in the present day.

In this activity, students will excavate a fossil and obtain information about prehistoric life from a fossil. The importance of data collection is emphasized. Directions for making the fossil matrix are included.

Students will create a model of Earth's layers to demonstrate the fossilization process.

Students make molds and casts of objects to make their own fossils. They will then compare their products to the original materials.

Students recognize the kind of information that can be accumulated by studying dinosaur fosisls as well as understand that some fossil facts are made based on comparisons with living organisms.

This scientific article explains the ethymology, the origin, and the retrieval of fossiles in quarries. An audio link provides an impression of children looking for fossiles in a quarry. The article is written for native speakers age 8 and up. The audio is spoken at a natural pace.

This scientific article focuses on the adaptive capabilities of animals using the example of the Ichtyosaur. It first explains how the Ichtyosaur found a new territory with better survival chances in the sea and, thus adapted its bodily features to life in the sea. It then explains how the Ichtysaurus eventually lost the competition over food to a new species, which was better adapted and of comparable size. In consequence the Ichtysaurus died out long before the mass dying of dinosaurs.

The article attends to three topics: 1. the smallest dinosaur in the world found in Bavaria, 2. the largest dinosaur found in Bavaria, and 3. types of rhinoceros that lived in Bavaria. Each part has a link to more detailed information on an additional page. The text is written in child-friendly language and appropriate for children age 8 and up.

In this classroom activity, young students are introduced to sets and subsets. The activity opens with background information for teachers about cladistics. After brainstorming different ways to group the class itself, students work in small groups to identify subsets of coins. The groups then complete a worksheet that challenges them to group dinosaurs into sets and subsets and share their results with the class.

In this classroom activity, young students compare their feet to the foot of a large Apatosaur. The activity opens with background information for teachers about the enormous size range of dinosaurs. After using personal references to describe the size of dinosaurs, students examine the outline of an Apatosaur footprint. Students then estimate how many of their footprints would fit inside the Apatosaur footprint and conduct an experiment to test their estimate.

Students examine characteristics of ptersosaurs as they evolved over millions of years and consider how these adaptations made pterosaurs effective hunters and survivors.

In this lesson, students are presented with fossils and other earth materials and given clues as to their origin. After identifying the fossils and materials, they will form a hypothesis as to how they were formed and what is was before preservation.

In this activity, students will observe and compare fossils with living organisms. They will then make their own "fossils" and compare them to the "organism" from which they were made. Students will journal their observations, procedures, and questions.

In this investigation students will look at various items to see if they can correctly identify fossils. After discussion, students will make inferences as to what the environments were like for these organisms to exist.

In this investigative activity, students will gather materials from their outdoor environment and work individually (or in pairs) to create a model of a fossil using primarily modeling clay and glue. Students will form and discuss the differences between a "mold" and a "cast" model fossil(s).