Backyard Explorer: Grades 3 to 5
Twelve weeks of real field science: habitats, food webs, life cycles and a field guide for your own region.
Free, start to finish. No card. Every week opens without signing in.
- Grade
- Grades 3 to 5
- Length
- 12 weeks
- Pace
- 6 short lessons a week, about 15 minutes each
- Price
- Free, every week
About this course
Backyard Explorer for grades 3 to 5 is a 12-week life science course done outside. Kids map a habitat, tell an observation from a guess, study the structures and behaviors of birds, insects, plants and other neighbors, trace a food web, follow life cycles and seasons through real sighting data, and ask what happens when a habitat changes. Each week's field guide lists the species people record most in your region of the United States, built from GBIF sighting records, and a grown-up picks the region once. Short daily lessons, quick checks that give a hint before the answer, a nature notebook, and an Explorer Day outing each Saturday. Every week is free.
Kids will
- Tell an observation from an inference and record both in a field notebook
- Map a habitat and name what living things need from it
- Describe structures and behaviors that help birds, insects and plants survive
- Build a food web from the species in your own region
- Read sighting data by month to describe life cycles, seasons and migration
- Explain what happens to living things when a habitat changes, and one way to help
The 12 weeks
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Week 1
The Field Notebook
Observe, record and wonder like a naturalist
NGSS 4-LS1-2
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Week 2
Map Your Habitat
Food, water, cover and space, drawn from above
NGSS 3-LS4-3
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Week 3
Birds: Built to Survive
Feathers, beaks, feet and the things birds do
NGSS 4-LS1-1
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Week 4
Insects and Pollinators
Six legs, four stages and a flower full of visitors
NGSS 3-LS1-1
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Week 5
Plants: Built From Air and Water
Where the stuff of a plant really comes from
NGSS 5-LS1-1
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Week 6
Signs and Safety
Reading the clues that mammals, reptiles and amphibians leave behind
NGSS 4-LS1-1
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Week 7
Who Eats Whom
Producers, consumers, decomposers and the webs that link them
NGSS 5-LS2-1
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Week 8
Living in Groups
Flocks, herds, schools and colonies, and why they help
NGSS 3-LS2-1
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Week 9
Life Cycles
Birth, growth, reproduction and death, in four very different lives
NGSS 3-LS1-1
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Week 10
Seasons and Migration
Reading the months as data
NGSS 3-LS4-3
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Week 11
When Habitats Change
Move, adjust or decline
NGSS 3-LS4-4
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Week 12
Citizen Scientist
Your records help protect living things
NGSS 5-ESS3-1
Standards practiced. NGSS: 4-LS1-2, 3-LS4-3, 4-LS1-1, 3-LS1-1, 5-LS1-1, 5-LS2-1, 3-LS2-1, 3-LS4-4, 5-ESS3-1. Each week has short lessons Monday to Friday and an Explorer Day outing with the family on Saturday.
More in Backyard Explorer
Try Week 1 today.
Open the course, pick Day 1 and go. Make a free parent account when you want progress saved for each kid.