This a great place to learn how they explore for under water life from the mini sub to the incredible pictures.
Everyone will enjoy this web experience.

As a homeschooling family, we are always working on projects/resources together. Everyone in our family loved doing this. From the youngest to the oldest! I am very impressed with this. We ALL learned something from it. Thank you so much!

I was extremely impressed with this source about worm watching. My son had a blast watching the worms and learning about why we need them and the importance the roles of every creature, even worms has on our planet.

As a homeschool mom, this resource was very helpful and easy to use. My child enjoyed studying worms and the good they do for our soil. I think the more we know about how all things work together in our environment the better we will teach our children to take better care of it! This is a good resource to begin to understand how important the smaller things in life are and how they relate to us.

We came across this when we were looking up information on Pandas. We got to see Tai Shan getting cozy with his mommy. The kids just thought it was a riot. So now when we want to know more about animals we have a chance to see them move around in real time hundreds of miles away. What an educational and fun experience it is. Thank you National Zoo for this opportunity to let us view your wild collection.

The webcams are such a good way to watch the animal interactions, to watch the young ones grow such as tia shan. i have viewed him almost daily since day one and i feel as though i have grown right along with him.

I really like everything I saw on the animal cam. My son thought it was a neat way to view other animals that we do not normally see. I will recommend this site to other homeschoolers.

I used much of this information to journal birds with 6th grade visual art students. Each chose a bird indigenous to Ohio to journal and sketch. We looked at John Jame Audubon and Genevieve Estelle Jones' work. Our art told a story of the bird, it's habitat, food and habits.

This resource is really well-designed for students of all ages who want to keep a nature journal as part of a class project. There are great ideas here on keeping a nature journal using Smithsonian archives, with topics ranging from birds to tigers. Experienced scientists and explorers share their ideas for how to enliven the journal (include found objects such as feathers). Although designed for middle schoolers, the idea can be implemented at all levels from Kindergarten through college with a little tweaking. Nicely done!

The Smithsonian's educational resources are such a joy to us. We began nature journaling not too long ago and my son and I have learned so much. We did a lesson on birds and my son and I can now spot different types of birds that we see. We added bird songs to the lesson, so now when we hear a bird, we can also identify it before we see it. What a wonderful resource! Thank you, Smithsonian!

Wow! This is an incredible resource for my homeschooling children. I was very impressed with the varied information on each animal. The details were very educational from interactive photos to audio clips.

This site is a wonderful resource for my 5th graders. Every year we complete a research project on North American animals and their habitats. This site helps students find the information they need while accommodating multiple learning abilities.

Both my students and I loved using this for my Biology class. A quick and easy source useful for teaching North American mammals, whether you are looking for specific species or a family.
I found its teacher's resource link especially helpful for creating lesson plans.

Print out the animal fact sheets and put them in a notebook to be read time and time again. Great resource.

I love this resource for small mammal information. I am especially excited to have access to the camera footage. I have bookmarked this for future use. Thank you for the great resource.

This is a great extension resource. I would also consider using this as an extra credit assignment.

This lesson helps illustrate the interdependence and complexity of food chains and webs. The activity gives learners concrete examples of how living organisms depend on one another and the importance of healthy ecosystems. Our learners gained a greater understanding of the complexity of food webs.

I used this lesson in my classroom and found it to be an excellent way to demonstrate the interdependence of plants and animals.

The instructions and materials provided allowed me to use the lesson easily with my group of 20 - 24 inclusion students.

I have passed on the link to this lesson to many other teachers.

This is a great activity that will really engage students. I love the idea of having the kids be the animals and have them connect themselves with yarn. It also makes a great bulletin board after you have completed the exercise. Using the pictures and the yarn, it can create a great visual that students can use as a reference.

"Dinosaurs" is a fantastic resource for budding paleontologists! The text is informative -- we were able to find the answer to just about every question the kids could formulate. The younger dino enthusiasts found the interactive fossil digs especially interesting. If you are planning a field trip to the museum, this resource provides great pre- or post- visit information and activities, but it also stands on its own as a learning tool.

The dinosaur exhibit at the Smithsonian is truly an amazing thing to see. The fossils towering over us was a incredible experience. The children and I learned a great deal about the history involved in dinosaurs. I never knew there were so many dinosaurs that had existed in the past. It was a wonderful experience for all of us. The sights and sounds really made us feel we were back in the prehistoric age.

This article was very informative! There were many interesting facts about the bones themselves. The article was written well and the extra information boxes were filled with cool facts! All the work that goes into the exhibit is really amazing!

I am finishing my teaching degree and I had a class recently related to this. This resource covers everything from that class in a concise, clean, way that left me thoroughly impressed. I would definitely suggest this to other instructors who wish to educate their students on the basics of Planet Earth's history.

Nice solid color differentiation; Wish there would be more to see and more to do. My kids liked the ease of changing time periods and seeing the images.

This is a wonderful resource. You can download the quiz and curriculum guide for free, and you can order additional materials.

The online exhibition allows the class to read, research, examine, and discover new ideas on the subject of animal environment and the oceanic community of people and animal ecosystems.

This was fascinating to this urban class of students who did not know what a squid was and how it looked.

We also learned about various products used by us on a daily basis that have an element of the OCEAN FLAVOR in them. My students and I are drawing pictures of the taningia and the giant squid to show their difference in appearance and in size. This is great because it allows students to attach their image of the squid and the ocean environment with what they saw and what they learned from the site.

Both sites will also encourage student writings and making comparisons and contrasts.

This webpage starts off pretty mildly (the main page) but then gives lots of good and interesting information. It is probably best for older students who are interested in topics like this or as an addition to an exciting challenge or unit plan. I happen to love information about the giant squid so I loved this webpage but it may not be everyone. Good information!

Thank you for such a great resource. I am starting my unit on plants and I like the way you interrelated the subject matter of plants and animals.

I used part of this resource to integrate into a project. My 7th graders were interested and engaged once they realized their connection to pollinators. I intend on using most of the materials in my classroom next year. Well Done Smithsonian! Thank you!

Great real-world introduction to marine biology. Wish I could have seen it when I was in school.

This looks like a really cool project! I think my 5th grade students would enjoy it so much. I could use it with them in their study of taxonomy, classification, preservation of species, and habitat conservation. Ever since my trip to Alaska I have developed a tremendous love for whales and would love to get my kids interested and on board. Thanks.

I used the video clip of the TED award about ocean life and its endangerment in my classes. I like the fact that I can control which parts of the video clip I want my students to watch. I was able to select which sections of the 18 minute video which would have been too long. Excellent information for a broad range of age groups.

Wow, the Ocean Planet website has so many important resources and informations for me to use to teach my 4 year old about ocean life. She needs to understand now at a young age the importance of our ocean life and how we need to protect it. She loves asking questions about the ocean and when I looked at this website, I knew it will be a site I continuously go to for information in explaining things to my daughter. I highly recommend this site to everyone!!

After reviewing the online exhibition entitled, Ocean Planet, I thought this site would be exciting for my third grade class of eager young scientists.

Although, I've never sailed nor fished, I hold great admiration for those who do! I've watched "The Perfect Storm", "Moby Dick", and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", as well as other film/documentaries/stories about brave fishermen. But these movies are always about modern fishermen and about "men". I was aware of the traditional Inuit and African women who hold this craft as an art form and spiritual form.

While reading the captions and information on the squid, I discovered, we really don't know much about oceanic animals as we appear to...we have a long ways to go. There have been much folklore about these ocean creatures; unfortunately the myths and tales have given them a monstrous appearance.

Thanks SI and NASA for making learning fun.

The information here will greatly benefit my students. I have been doing an Ocean Unit for the past 2 years and I'm glad I came across this resource to add more depth to my current lessons. I love the "fly by" video that takes the students on a quick virtual adventure which will help them understand that the ocean floor is not just a flat sandy bottom like many 5 year olds believe!

I took my preschool special reading class to the zoo to engage there senses. with help from this resource my kids loved there trip. thanks again

This is an excellent way for younger children to learn about dinosaurs. Very educational. I would us this in my class.

What a neat way to expose young children to this topic.

I am a homeschool mom and teacher for science co-op classes. This would help as a science supplement resource, very informative, cool pictures and fun to use.

My daughter whom I homeschool was delighted with these activities. It was a good way for her to learn AND have fun all at the same time. I would recommend.

The bright colorful design & layout of these activities captured the attention of all our students. They finished them with a smile and asked for more. It was an enjoyable experience and kept them involved.

Great Resource. Allowing the group to use the field guide for classifying. We used binoculars for the first time with our 5th graders with this.

Excellent resource!
Allowed us to dig deeper in a subject that we greatly enjoyed! Thank you!

There are many activities on this site. I explored "A Walk in the Forest," specifically "I.D. a Tree Walk" and "Forest Layers Walk." The first taught how to use a dichotomous key and the second defined canopy to leaf litter to under a rotting log. The information is presented clearly, with good visuals, clear text and narration. If you can't actually go into the forest to teach these concepts, this site is the next best thing.

Anyone interested in Florida ecology would do well to stop in online at the Smithsonian Marine Substation, http://www.sms.si.edu/. The physical location of the facility is on Route 1A (Seabreeze Drive) from Fort Pierce to the city's beaches. Off that coastline, you can casually swim to a sunken pirate ship and possible find Spanish gold coin after a storm. Online, an entirely more extensive treasure greets you.

Indian River Lagoon is a long north-south estuary formed by Florida's land mass and westward barrier islands. The temperate climate zone of the South gives way to the subtropics here on the northern edge of south Florida, the location of the Smithsonian Marine Substation at Fort Pierce. It's online presence features exhaustive, well-organized descriptions of Florida's biological diversity.

An online lesson plan allows web surfers to step through the process of setting up their own model of a marine ecosystem. Invaluable tips from decades of experience teach how the pros ..

This activity struck me as not only being possibly effective for high schoolers, but also elementary/middle if you toned it down a bit. What I especially liked was the option for change in the instant replays, asking the students to consider what they observed in previous run-throughs and to change something that would give a different result possibly that also occurs in the natural world. A very good activity to teach predation, food webs and chains, and energy transfer.

I love this Panda Mask. It is a great addition to our unit on animals. I love to encourage pretend play in the classroom. This mask is an easy craft for little kids and they love to pretend to be something else.

This was great for my 2yo when we went to the zoo. He was excited to be "one of the animals."

I teach in a Georgia Lottery funded Pre-K classroom and these types of activities though cutesy are not very "learning" .... If anything I would encourage the children to have real picture resources of pandas available and then draw what they see.... their interpretation of it on cardstock and then let them create their own mask. The activity would be fine for a time-killer or just to have out in the art center but not as an instructor led activity.

Very good.