Kindergarten science activities

Ramps and toy cars rebuilt so kindergartners compare pushes like scientists, five more investigations by NGSS standard, a free printable, and every kindergarten science Mission by standard.

  • By Skyler Carr, co-founder and CEO, Mission.io
  • Last updated

Who we are. Mission.io makes Missions: teacher-led, whole-class simulations where students use what they’re learning to work through a real scenario together.

Everything on this page works without us. Every kindergarten science Mission is at the end, by standard, free. (The one we’d run in kindergarten sends the class to help a few plants and animals that aren’t happy where they live. The toy cars get the day off.)

On this page

What kindergarten science looks like

Kindergarten science activities are investigations in which the class gathers evidence about something the standards name, has to say what that evidence shows, and leaves each child answerable for a piece. This page covers the kindergarten performance expectations, K-PS2-1 to K-ESS3-3, and the K to 2 engineering standards, with an investigation and a Mission for each where one exists. The kindergarten STEM activities page carries the build challenges.

The year runs on a handful of ideas a five-year-old can test with her hands: pushes and pulls change how things move (K-PS2-1), and a push can be fixed when it misses (K-PS2-2); sunlight warms the ground (K-PS3-1), and shade slows it down (K-PS3-2); plants and animals need things to survive (K-LS1-1), change the places they live to get them (K-ESS2-2), and live where their needs are met (K-ESS3-1). Then the weather and its patterns (K-ESS2-1), forecasts for the bad days (K-ESS3-2), people helping the land, water, and air (K-ESS3-3), and the K to 2 engineering design standards (K-2-ETS1-1 to K-2-ETS1-3).

You know the activity that usually stands in for the forces unit: a basket of toy cars at a center, a ramp made from a book, and a lot of very happy crashing. That’s play, and play is a fine twenty minutes. Science is what happens when the class has to say which push did it, and show you.

Six things that turn a center into an investigation

Inquiry-based science teaching outperformed traditional instruction across 37 studies, and the surprise inside the finding is who leads it: teacher-led inquiry beat student-led by a clear margin (Furtak, Seidel, Iverson, and Briggs, 2012). Hands-on helped most when students also had to think and talk about what they saw (Minner, Levy, and Century, 2010). The uncomfortable part is the clock: grades K to 2 average about 17 minutes a day on science, against 89 on reading (2018 NSSME+). That’s a master schedule, not a choice, and it means the 17 minutes have to be an investigation.

  1. 1. A real problem with stakes the class can feel.

    “Roll the car down the ramp” is a center. “Get the car into the garage without crashing through the wall” is a problem.

  2. 2. Apply, don't recall.

    A second round that only works with what the first round showed. If the activity can be finished without the science, it isn’t a science activity.

  3. 3. Group goals with individual accountability.

    The one most science classics miss: one child with the car, three children waiting for a turn. When the group shared a goal and each student answered for a part, 84% of studies found a positive effect; without both, 17% (Slavin, 1991).

  4. 4. The teacher leads the thinking.

    The inquiry finding above settles it. Three questions at the bottom of the ramp beat a worksheet at the table.

  5. 5. A debrief where the class argues it out.

    The investigation is the setup. The talk on the rug afterward, what made the car go farther and how do you know, is where the science gets said out loud.

  6. 6. A way to see who did what.

    If you can’t tell which child changed one thing on purpose and which one just pushed harder every time, you can’t teach the practice. You can only hope for it.

Every crash is a data point.

The sheet at the end of the next section has the ramps ready to run on the rug: the role cards, the team’s record strip, and the tally. Get the sheet →

Ramps and toy cars, rebuilt for kindergarten (K-PS2-1)

Toy cars, a ramp made from a book on two blocks, and the question of what happens when you push harder. It’s the kindergarten forces unit in most NGSS-aligned sequences, and every kindergarten room already has the cars. The way it usually runs is a free-play station: no problem to solve, the words push and pull arriving after the fun instead of before it, and you at a different center. Here’s the version that hits all six.

Time
40 minutes, so it fits a 45-minute block as written. The two-day version for a 17-minute block: the rug lesson and round one on day one; round two and the debrief on day two.
Groups
Threes. With 22 children, seven groups of three and one child who becomes the class Garage Checker, walking the room with the sticky dots.
Supplies for eight ramps
8 toy cars, 8 ramps (a book propped on blocks works), masking tape for the garages, sticky dots. $0 if the cars are in the room.
Standards
K-PS2-1 (compare pushes and pulls of different strengths and directions); the garage round also serves K-PS2-2 (does a design solution change the car’s speed or direction as intended).

  1. Teach first, 8 minutes on the rugApply

    Push a car gently, push it hard, pull it back, and ask what changed each time. Chart two words, push and pull, and two more, gentle and hard. Those four words are the content they apply.

  2. The problemStakes

    The toy car has to get from the top of the ramp into the garage (a taped box on the floor) and stop inside it. A car that stops short is stuck in the road; a car that goes past crashes through the garage wall. Say it out loud. Kindergartners will protect that garage.

  3. Three roles, one job eachAccountability

    One short job on each card, read aloud, with a name on it. Pusher and Spotter swap between rounds.

    • Pusher

      The only hands on the car. Says "gentle" or "hard" before each push.

    • Spotter

      Watches where the car stops and puts a sticky dot there.

    • Recorder

      Colors a box on the sheet: short, in the garage, or past.

  4. You lead the thinkingTeacher leads

    Three questions, asked at the bottom of the ramp: Was that a gentle push or a hard push? Where did the car stop, and why do you think so? What will you change next time, the push or the ramp? The hardest part is leaving the ramp where they put it.

  5. Two rounds, so the first one has to be usedApply

    Five pushes with one ramp height. Then the team changes one thing, the ramp height or the push, and does five more. One thing, not two: a team that changes the push and the ramp together can’t say which one got the car into the garage.

  6. The debrief, 8 minutes on the rugDebrief

    Sheets in laps. What made the car go farther, a harder push or a higher ramp? Which teams got the car to stop in the garage, and what did they do? Who in your group noticed something first? Five-year-olds will name the kid who said “the hard push went past.”

  7. See who did whatSee who did what

    The observation sheet, four behaviors per child: said push or pull on their own, made a prediction (any prediction counts), changed one thing on purpose, told a teammate what they saw. With five-year-olds a tally catches about a third of the room; the Recorder’s colored boxes carry the rest.

(At least one car will leave the ramp sideways and visit the reading corner. It counts as past.)

The toy car ramp investigation, free

Emailed now, ready to copy: the teacher page, three role cards (Pusher, Spotter, Recorder), the team’s ten-box record strip with its “what we changed” choice, and the four-behavior tally.

It’s on its way.

Check your inbox for the toy car ramp investigation.

Email me the sheet. It comes as a PDF, ready to print. Unsubscribe anytime.

Five more kindergarten investigations, by standard

Five more on every kindergarten list: what each one is, how it usually runs, and the fix, in the order the standards run.

Sunlight, living things, and weather

2. Which surface gets warmest in the sun? (K-PS3-1)

Needs black and white paper, small objects, a sunny window, a warm-or-cool card per child. Each child owns one object.

Small objects sit on black paper and white paper in a sunny window, and after a while the class feels them by hand to find which ones got warm. If the class has already named the sun as the thing doing the warming, it puts that idea to work. As usually run, though, it’s a touch-and-tell: every hand is on the windowsill at once, and you can’t tell which child noticed what.

The fix

  1. Before anything goes in the window, ask the class what will warm the objects up, and wait until someone names the sun.
  2. Give each child one object to set on the black paper or the white, and only its owner touches it.
  3. After the wait, each child feels their object and holds up a warm or cool card, so every hand on the windowsill has a claim to make.

No page for this one; the fix above is the whole of it.

3. Shade for a stuffed animal (K-PS3-2)

Needs paper plates, straws, craft sticks, construction paper, foil, masking tape, Play-Doh, a toy animal and an ice cube per group, one more cube for the open sun, a sunny window (or a lamp). Groups of three. 45 minutes.

Kindergartners build something from plates, straws, foil, and tape that keeps a stuffed animal in the shade by a sunny window. It’s the one kindergarten standard that is a build in its own right, so the engineering is already the point. As usually run, though, it’s a craft: the roofs get admired, and nobody checks whether the animal’s spot stayed any cooler.

The fix

  1. Give the build a stake the class can feel, like a toy animal that has to wait in the sun and could get too hot.
  2. Put an ice cube in each structure, and one more in the open sun.
  3. After the wait, line the cubes up on a tray and ask which ones are biggest, and what those structures had.

See the shade structure rebuilt for kindergarten →

4. Bean in a bag (K-LS1-1)

Needs bean seeds, paper towels, zip bags, water, a sunny window. One bag per child, plus one dry bag. Two weeks.

A bean seed goes on a wet paper towel in a zip bag taped to the window, and over two weeks the class watches a root and then a sprout push out. The growth is real, and kindergartners will check on it every morning if you let them. As usually run, though, the bag does all the work, and no child owns one or has to say what the seed needed.

The fix

  1. Give each child their own bag with their name on it, and a checkmark on the class chart each day they check it.
  2. Tape one more bag next to them with a seed on a dry towel, and tell the class it’s there for a reason.
  3. At the end, ask what the wet bags had that the dry one didn’t.

No page for this one. Thrive Together, below, is the Mission on this standard.

5. The weather chart (K-ESS2-1)

Needs a class weather chart and a window. Whole class, with a rotating Weather Reporter. A month.

Every morning for a month, the class looks out the window and marks the day’s weather on a chart: sunny, cloudy, rainy, windy. It gets two things right, because the class uses what it knows about weather and you lead the talk. As usually run, though, it’s calendar time, where the same few kids answer and nobody has to think before they look.

The fix

  1. Rotate a Weather Reporter, so each day a different child reads the sky and marks the chart.
  2. Before the Reporter looks out the window, ask the class for a prediction, and have a few children say why they think so.

No page for this one; it’s a month of quick checks.

6. Sink or float (no kindergarten standard)

Needs a tub of water and small objects to predict, test, and sort.

A tub of water and a pile of small objects: the class guesses sink or float for each one, drops it in, and sorts the results. It isn’t on a kindergarten standard. It’s a conversation about what things are like, and a good one, and if you ask why each thing floated, you’re leading the thinking. As usually run, though, nothing rides on it, and with everyone dropping things in at once, you can’t tell which child guessed what.

The fix

  1. Give it a stake: the class is picking things to build a raft for a toy, so a wrong guess sinks the toy.
  2. Give each child one object to own, and have them hold up a sink or float card before it goes in.
  3. Only the owner drops their object in, and the class checks the card against what the object did.

No kindergarten standard, so no Mission row and no page. The three fixes are enough.

  • Our part · We make Missions

    Then the unit has somewhere to go

    Plenty of teachers rebuild these by hand every unit, and it works. A Mission is a teacher-led, whole-class simulation on the standard the unit was teaching: the story plays on your projector, every child makes the calls on their own screen, and the only way through is using what they just learned. The ramps belong to your pushes and pulls unit. Thrive Together belongs to the living things unit, the one the bean in a bag teaches. The nearest Mission to the ramps’ unit is Pushing and Pulling, first in the tables below.

    You're at the helm, not on the hook.

    Thrive Together: the living things unit, as a Mission

    Thrive Together · Kindergarten · About 14 minutes · One device per student, plus your projector · Free with a teacher account

    Young students in school uniforms sit around a table of laptops showing a Mission screen. A girl in the middle points across the table as she talks, and a boy at the end rests his chin on his hand and grins.
    What you'll see: a laptop for every child, and a girl pointing across the table as she talks.

    A small collection of plants and animals isn’t happy where it lives, and the crew sets out with fellow explorers to help. Students look at data about each living thing, work out what it needs, and make the decision that improves its health (K-LS1-1). The story plays on the projector, and every child makes the call on their own screen; there are no stations or crew teams in this one. The story goes the way most of the class chooses, and each child’s own choices and answers go into their report.

    We connect every screen and keep the story moving. You walk the tables and ask the questions a five-year-old needs asked out loud: What does this one need? What is it missing? What would you change first?

    It’s built to K-LS1-1, the same standard as the bean in a bag above. Run the bean first, and tell the class why: the plants and animals in the Mission need help, and the class will be the ones who know what a seed needed to grow. The lesson prepares them. The Mission is what they’re preparing for.

    “This is the most fun they have all week, and they’re learning the whole time. I’m not going back.”

    Lisa Free, Mission Lab specialist, Cook Elementary School, UT

    Will it work in my room?

    Students join with a class code: no student accounts, no student email, no passwords. Chromebooks, laptops, or tablets, plus your projector. Free for teachers, no credit card. Student data is covered by COPPA and FERPA, and we signed the Student Privacy Pledge. At about 14 minutes, Thrive Together runs three minutes under the average K to 2 science block. On a shared cart it’s the day you have the cart, and that’s fine, as long as the class knows all week that cart day is where the unit is headed.

    START FREE →

    Communication first, then two for kindergarten

    What the report shows

    A Mission.io class report: the class score in each of six skills, from knowledge and application to collaboration, critical thinking, and resilience, with the class chart across the year below.
    A class report from a real Mission: the class score in each of six skills, then each skill across the year.

    Every Mission produces a report for every student, built from what that student did across the whole Mission, on the skills the Mission captured. The six it can capture are Knowledge, Application, Initiative, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Resilience. The first two are what a test already sees. The other four are the human skills every school promises. The test shows what they know. The report shows the rest. SEE THE EVIDENCE →

    You taught it. Now find out who can use it.

    Who's behind it

    Mission.io is a research and design organization with one job: make collaborative, active learning something a teacher can run every unit instead of once a semester, and put a report in your hands when it’s over. Over a million students have run a Mission. The research behind them is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, and Mission.io meets ESSA Level II standards, as validated by Instructure.

    Kindergarten science Missions by NGSS standard

    Thrive Together is one. There are 14 science and engineering Missions at kindergarten, numbered 7 to 20 below, and each one is where a unit can end: pushes and pulls end at Pushing and Pulling, living things end at Thrive Together, the weather ends at Forecast Fiasco. Every lesson finally has somewhere to go. Every kindergarten standard has at least one. Each code links to its standard on nextgenscience.org.

    Pushes, pulls, and sunlight (K-PS2, K-PS3)

    Two Missions. Beach Frenzy at 15 minutes fits a 17-minute block, and Pushing and Pulling takes all 17.

    Physical science Missions for kindergarten, by NGSS code.
    NumberThe standardMissionMinutes
    7K-PS2-1, K-PS2-2 Pushes and pulls of different strengths and directions change how things move; does a push fix work. On this page: 1. Ramps and toy cars.Pushing and Pulling17
    8K-PS3-1, K-PS3-2, 1-PS4-3, K-2-ETS1-1, K-2-ETS1-2, K-2-ETS1-3 Sunlight warms things; shield a robot from the sun and compare tested designs (grades K to 2). On this page: 2. Which surface gets warmest and 3. Shade for a stuffed animal.Beach Frenzy15

    What living things need (K-LS1)

    One standard, one Mission, and the bean in a bag is the investigation that sets it up.

    The life science Mission for kindergarten, by NGSS code.
    NumberThe standardMissionMinutes
    9K-LS1-1 What plants and animals need to survive, worked out from ones that are struggling. On this page: 4. Bean in a bag.Thrive Together14

    Weather, places, and people (K-ESS2, K-ESS3)

    The deepest shelf: six Missions. Finding an Ocean Home, at 12 minutes, fits a 17-minute block.

    Earth science Missions for kindergarten, by NGSS code.
    NumberThe standardMissionMinutes
    10K-ESS2-2 Polluted water: how plants and animals change their surroundings to cope, and a fix that helps everyone (grades K and 1)Tackling Toxins21
    11K-ESS2-2 How beavers, prairie dogs, and woodpeckers change their surroundings to meet their needsLiving Proof19
    12K-ESS3-3 Help Dug see how his careless choices hurt a neighborhood’s plants, air, and creek, and say how to fix each oneNo, No, Dug18
    13K-ESS3-1 Match an animal’s needs to a place to live: a new home for a fish named ZiggyFinding an Ocean Home12
    14K-ESS3-2 What weather forecasts are for, and how to get ready for severe weather (grades K to 2)Forecast Fiasco22
    15K-ESS2-1 Weather patterns over time: compare weather from several places to pick flowers that will thrive. On this page: 5. The weather chart.Blossoming Climates17

    Engineering design (K-2-ETS1)

    Built to the K to 2 engineering standard, which runs from kindergarten through 2nd grade. Tools of the Trade at 10 minutes is the shortest Mission on the page; Beach Frenzy, above, carries all three engineering codes. The kindergarten engineering activities page maps these standards with the design challenges that teach them.

    The engineering Mission for grades K to 2, by NGSS code.
    NumberThe standardMissionMinutes
    16K-2-ETS1-1 Weigh rescue ideas for a friend caught in seaweed, using the materials on hand (grades K to 2)Tools of the Trade10

    Also at kindergarten, on 1st grade standards

    Four more that run at kindergarten on a 1st grade code: daylight, the moon, and sound. Dark Side of the Moon is the one built for teams.

    Science Missions that run at kindergarten on 1st grade standards.
    NumberThe standardMissionMinutes
    171-ESS1-2 How much daylight there is at different times of year (grades K to 3)Season Search18
    181-ESS1-1 Track the sun’s daylight pattern to place the beach umbrellas (grades K and 1)Dug's Beach Party21
    191-ESS1-1 Why Earth’s moon seems to be disappearing (grades K to 2)Dark Side of the Moon27
    201-PS4-1 Sound and vibration: find out why every card tower at the competition fell (grades K and 1)In the Cards17
    START FREEMISSION BRIEF →

    Free teacher account, no card. Start with the Communication Mission, marked Start here in your library, then the Mission for your unit, each after its 5-minute Teacher Preview.

    Also at this grade

    The kindergarten STEM activities page lists the math and creativity Missions, and the kindergarten collaboration activities, kindergarten critical thinking activities, and kindergarten problem solving activities pages each pick the Mission we’d run for that skill.

Questions kindergarten science teachers ask

I get about 17 minutes for science. Which of these fits?

The ramps split into two days: the rug lesson and round one, then round two and the debrief. The bean in a bag and the weather chart are a daily check. Four Missions on this page fit inside 17 minutes: Tools of the Trade (10), Finding an Ocean Home (12), Thrive Together (14), and Beach Frenzy (15).

Which kindergarten NGSS standards does this page map?

This page maps all of them: pushes and pulls (K-PS2), sunlight and warming (K-PS3), what living things need (K-LS1), weather and how living things change the land (K-ESS2), people, severe weather, and where living things live (K-ESS3), and the K to 2 engineering standards (K-2-ETS1). The tables map each code to its Mission and to the investigation on this page that teaches it, and every kindergarten standard has at least one Mission.

How do I grade a kindergarten science investigation?

Grade what each child said and did: the four-behavior tally over two or three investigations, and the Recorder’s colored boxes. A child who pushed hard every time and never changed a thing shows up on the tally, and now you know what to ask next time.

My kindergartners can't read yet. Can they do this?

The ramps run on very few words: role cards you read aloud, a record strip they color, and four words you chart on the rug. For the Mission, the story is narrated aloud and shown as text on the main screen, and the text on each student’s own screen can be read aloud to them.

My class has never run a Mission. Where do we start?

With the Communication Mission, marked Start here in your Mission library. There’s a version for K to 1, and it gets the class ready to run any other Mission. Then pick the Mission for your unit from the tables, and watch its 5-minute Teacher Preview first.

Science your kindergartners can prove

Day one, an investigation by hand with the sheet. Day two, a Mission from the tables, after a 5-minute Teacher Preview. Both free.

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