Online Learning Resources
As we hunker in our homes in response to the COVID-19 progression, we as Walking Mountains Science Center,
do not want our community to stop learning and exploring. Explore our Backyard Nature Challenge, STEM at Home, Virtual Field Trips, and Early Childhood activities.
Below find activities, online learning resources and lessons for all ages!
Do you want to do something outside that involves nature and learning? Join our family Backyard Nature Challenge! Make the world your backyard (safely) and learn along with us.
Check out the challenge: HERE
Find at-home activities for toddlers and preschool students, updated weekly.
Find fun: HERE
Going stir crazy at home? Starting to feel like a mad scientist? Join us weekly on Fridays for our Walking Mountains’ staff favorite STEM activities. Pick out activities that you can do at home with your elementary and middle school aged students either all at once or pace yourself throughout the week.
Check out the STEM activities: HERE
Activities for: Outdoor STEM
Activities for: Summer STEM
Activities for: Technology
Activities for: Engineering
Activities for: Art in STEM
Activities for: Make a Mess
Through hands-on activities and investigations, students will have an opportunity to transform into meteorologists and explore the different wonders of weather!
Throughout the program, students will investigate the sun’s role in our changing weather, use a variety of instruments to study the weather, and explore ways that plants and animals can prepare for the weather.
Video: How does the sun affect the earth? – Join Cameron the Cloud and Walking Mountains educators to learn about how the earth’s position around the sun is the ultimate source for our weather and seasonal patterns.
Video : What’s up with clouds? – Create your own cloud dough to model the types of clouds while learning about how clouds are formed!
Video: Become a Meteorologist! – Learn how to use different tools to measure and even predict the weather in your area. As the weather changes with the seasons, we experience many different types of weather. Understanding and predicting what the weather might be like can allow us to be more prepared to play and enjoy the outdoors as much as possible!
Through hands-on exploration and dissections, students will have the opportunity to transform into botanists and discover the exciting world of plants! Students will delve into what plants need to survive, identify plant parts, and investigate the important relationship between plants and animals.
Video: What is a Plant? – What makes a plant different from other living organisms? Help us sort out what makes a plant unique from other living things! We will also learn about the different parts of a plant.
Learn what makes living things unique and how their adaptations help them thrive and survive in their environment! Throughout the program, students will engage in hands-on exploration of animal skulls, fur, scat, and tracks.
Video: Awesome Adaptations – What exactly is an adaptation? Let’s explore different adaptations that animals have to survive in their environment.
Video: Hiding in Plain Sight – One adaptation animals have is camouflage. Explore different reasons animals may be adapted to blend in to their surroundings. Expand your knowledge with a fun outdoor game!
Video: Snack Stasher – In a game of predator versus snacks, who will win? Animals change their behavior in response to their predators in order to protect important things, such as their snacks.
Video: Everybody Has to Eat – Learn about different adaptations that help animals get their food! If you want to take the experiment further, check out the following lesson plan.
Video: What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? – Follow along with a Walking Mountains educator as they read you their favorite book on animal adaptations. Can you guess which animal these body parts belong to? How do they help the animals survive?
Students will experiment with light and sound waves, while investigating their impact on the natural world. Explore light waves that we can see in nature, while learning about how animals can use sound waves to communicate.
Video: What are Light Waves? – How does light get from the sun to Earth? In waves of course! Join educators and experiment with light!
Video: Experimenting with Sound Waves – What is sound? Join our educators to learn about how sound waves can travel. Learn about how sound is used in nature and why it’s so important!
Video: See the Rainbow! – There are lots of colors in nature. How do our eyes see them? Learn about how we see color and challenge yourself to nature eye-spy!
Students will explore the diversity of life throughout different habitats, while investigating and comparing the four different components of a habitat. Students will also make observations of the relationships between plants and animals that are required for growth and survival.
Video: Let’s Find a Beaver Habitat – Join Walking Mountains Educators on an exploration of the Walking Mountains Campus to find the perfect spot for a beaver to live. What does it need in its habitat to survive?
Video: Habitat Needs: Food and Water – As the seasons change, animals must adapt to how they find food and water within their habitat. Learn about the differences between herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores and how they get their food.
Video: Habitat Needs: Shelter and Space – Discover the last two habitat needs with a guessing game. Now that you know what animals need to survive, go outside and see if you can build an animal habitat.
Students transform into water droplets as they journey through the water cycle and investigate how water shapes the land and impacts the life that depends on it.
Video: What is the Water Cycle Anyways? – What are the steps of the water cycle? What role does the sun play in the water cycle and how are clouds formed? Review the water cycle by following along with a water cycle diagram and dance!
Video: Modeling Condensation and Evaporation – Dive deeper into evaporation and condensation as we use a model to study these steps of the water cycle more closely!
Video: Where Does the Water Go? – All of us in Eagle County belong to the Eagle River Watershed. What does that mean and why is it important? Learn more about your watershed by building a model with Ashley from items that you have at home.
Students will travel back in time while exploring the McCoy Fossil Beds. Students will unearth fossils and discover how Colorado has changed over time. Students will also observe how the landscape continues to change and use inquiry to study rock patterns to learn the story that they tell about past environments.
Video: Changing Landscapes – The landscapes outside of your window have changed, and will continue to change, over time. Let’s learn how Colorado’s landscape has changed over the past 300 million years.
Video: Fabulous Fossils – Let’s investigate one of the fossils that we can find at the McCoy Fossil Beds – crinoids! Join Walking Mountains educators and figure out what these crinoids looked like when they are alive and learn what organisms they are similar to today.
Video: The Three Types of Rocks – Let’s go underground to discover the origin of our three types of rocks: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary.
Video: Fossils: How It’s Made – Take a journey with Walking Mountains educators to discover the steps that are needed to form a fossil over millions of years.
Curious about climate? In this program, students will engage in hands-on activities examining Colorado’s climate. Students will identify the differences between climate and weather, while exploring various natural hazards like avalanches and floods.
Video: Climate VERSUS Weather – You’ve heard the word climate and you’ve heard the word weather. Are they the same? Is one more important than the other? What’s the big deal about climate? Come learn about weather, climate and how it impacts your life.
Video: Climate Through the Ages – Colorado…both oceans and ice fields! Who would have thought? What evidence can we find that will tell us about Colorado’s past climates?
Video: Predict and Prepare – Can scientists know what future climates will be like? Why would we want to know about the future? Investigate the climate by looking at the Colorado River and explore what can be done to prepare for the future.
Students will get hands-on with geologic processes through a variety of experiments. Students will also investigate the rock cycle and learn about the three types of rocks.
Video: Earth’s Processes and Changing Landscapes – Join educators as they conduct experiments to look at a few important geologic processes. Learn how weathering, erosion, and deposition change the Earth’s surface.
Video: How Do We Classify Rocks? – Join Walking Mountains’ educators for a behind the scenes field trip to Walking Mountains to learn about the different types of rocks, why there are three main types of rocks, and how rocks can tell us about the ways they formed.
Students will experiment with energy while engaging in hands-on engineering projects to learn about the advantages and disadvantages of wind, solar, and hydro energy. Students will identify types of energy, witness the Law of Conservation of Energy, and engage in critical thinking skills as they compare and contrast renewable and nonrenewable energy sources.
Video 1: What is Energy? – This is a quick introduction to the world of energy! Learn about the differences between kinetic and potential energy, as well as the many different forms energy can take.
Video 2: Renewable versus Nonrenewable Energy Sources – Take a tour around the Walking Mountains Science Center campus to look for different sources of energy we use to power our buildings. Which ones are renewable and which ones are nonrenewable? What energy sources can you find around your home?
Video 3: “Who Wants to be a Sustainable Engineer?” – Join the Walking Mountains Educator team for a fun game show to see who can come up with the best design for different Sustainable Energy challenges! We’ll explore the world of Wind, Solar, and Hydroelectric energy sources and see which designs yield the best results.
Through a variety of experiments and observations students will examine the relationships and interactions between the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere as they take a critical look at how each of these factors impact our mountain weather. Students will also have the opportunity to learn about how mountain weather can affect our water sources here in the valley, as well as go on an exploration to see where their water comes from.
Video: Making a Cloud in a Bottle – Follow along in this experiment and we will discover the ingredients needed to make a cloud.
Video: Using Citizen Science to Study Weather – As students, how can we help meteorologists study weather? This video explores how animals can help us learn more about weather and climate.
Video: A Virtual Tour of the Eagle River Watershed – The Eagle River is what connects all of us in our valley. In this video, take a virtual tour of our watershed and find out where our water comes from.
Learn how living and nonliving components interact and depend on one another to maintain a healthy community. While exploring a variety of ecosystems, students will investigate the relationships and energy flow within an ecosystem!
The surface of the earth is always changing. Powerful, planet-wide forces make those changes, and they can happen faster than we think! Students will investigate the natural constructive and destructive processes that shape the Earth’s landscape. Students will explore content such as tectonic plate interactions, weathering, erosion, deposition, and stream dynamics.
Video 1: If Earth’s Plate Boundaries Were Social Distancing – What would Earth’s tectonic plate boundaries be like if they were social distancing? We’ll give you a hint – it can get messy.
Video 2: YOU WERE TAUGHT WRONG: Water – Not Paper – Beats Rock – How is water so powerful that it can change the entire planet’s surface? And how can the answer be related to pizza?
Video 3: Isolation Field Trip: Teaching MYSELF About SOIL?! – Watch a Walking Mountains educator try to teach himself about what is beneath the surface of Sweetwater by taking a field trip…alone.
Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth. Scientists who study biodiversity help put together data that informs important decisions regarding all of life on our planet. These decisions determine where we put roads and build homes in a way that provides habitat for humans and protects important habitats for plants and animals. On this program, students participate in hands-on field research protocols as they explore the interactions within an ecological community. By conducting a biophysical monitoring project, students will have the opportunity to investigate and compare the diversity between two unique ecosystems.
Video 1: What is Biodiversity? – Join Walking Mountains educators to learn about biodiversity and why it is important.
Video 2: Collecting Data – Join Walking Mountains educators as they construct test plots and compare data from two different areas at Walking Mountains Science Center.
Video 3: Human Impacts – How do humans impact biodiversity and why does that matter?
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