Field Trips | After Your Field Trip

The School and Public Programs team is always looking to improve our exhibits, tours, and Learning Labs. After your class has visited the NSF NCAR Visitor Center for a field trip, please fill out our survey to provide feedback.

Consider signing up for our K-12 newsletter. You will receive seven subject matter newsletters during the school year highlighting different Earth Science topics. You will get direct links to classroom activities, professional development workshops, upcoming virtual opportunities, notice to book an in-person program for the next school year, and other resources! You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to stay connected.

Activities After Your Learning Lab

We offer a variety of Learning Labs for students of all ages. Check out our recommended follow-up activities below for each of our Learning Labs!

Grades PreK - K:

Cloud Detectives: Send your students’ curious minds soaring as they explore the science of clouds. Through song, story, art, and play, students will learn about the many different types of clouds. Students will touch a cloud and watch a cloud burst into action. Weather permitting, this Learning Lab may include a short cloud walk outside on the Walter Orr Roberts Weather Trail.

• A Clouds Image Gallery, with pictures and descriptions of different types of clouds.
• The Cloud Sorting Game: Sort clouds based on how high above the ground they form.
• The Clouds Memory Game: Use your memory to find the matching pairs of clouds.
• The Cloud Matching Game: Learn the names of different types of clouds.
• The Clouds Teaching Box: A collection of classroom-ready activities, content, and multimedia resources to build student understanding of clouds.
• The Art of Clouds: Create your own art to depict cloud types.
• Cloud Viewer: Use the downloadable cloud viewer to explore the clouds and sky outside.
• Create a Portable Cloud; A hands-on activity to learn the conditions necessary for cloud formation.
• The Winter Weather Teaching Box: A collection of classroom-ready activities, content, and multimedia resources to build student understanding about the science of winter weather, including concepts of Earth Science.

Grades 1 - 3:

Air: A Piece of the Weather Puzzle (Grades 1-3): Did you know a typical cumulonimbus cloud can weigh as much as 253 blue whales? How does it stay up in the sky?! Explore how the Sun affects our Earth’s weather with an interactive experiment comparing hot and cold air. Transform your students into cloud detectives as we explore this cloudy mystery together and learn how air behaves when it changes temperature.

• Modeling the Behavior of Air with Bottles: Observe how changing the temperature of the air affects the behavior of air molecules.
• Balloon on a Bottle: Brainstorm various ways that an un-inflated balloon placed over a bottle’s opening can be inflated without touching the balloon.
• Air on the Go: Learn that air moves from areas of higher pressure to areas of lower pressure in this "magic trick" demonstration.
• Balloon Inside a Bottle: Learn that air takes up space and exerts pressure.
• Modeling a Weather Front: A demonstration of what happens at a weather front, when cold and warm fluid meet.
• The Winter Weather Teaching Box: A collection of classroom-ready activities, content, and multimedia resources to build student understanding about the science of winter weather, including concepts of Earth Science.

Weather Trail Discovery (Grades 2-3): Calling all weather explorers! Students embark upon an outdoor science scavenger hunt to see firsthand how weather impacts our surroundings. While walking on the Walter Orr Roberts Weather Trail, we’ll use scientific instruments to look for and learn about the weather wonders in NSF NCAR’s backyard.

• Photon Folks: Play a game to understand how visible light from the Sun is reflected, absorbed, and/or transmitted through certain objects on Earth and in the atmosphere.
• Looking Into Surface Albedo*: A hands-on inquiry activity to explore how the color of materials covering the Earth affects the amounts of sunlight it absorbs. *While this activity is designed for older students, it could be adapted for use with 3rd graders.
• The Winter Weather Teaching Box: A collection of classroom-ready activities, content, and multimedia resources to build student understanding about the science of winter weather, including concepts of Earth Science.

Grades 3 - 5:

Sky Sleuths: Inside Weather Data (Grades 3-5): Put your detective hats on as we discover what clues scientists use to create weather forecasts. We’ll explore how meteorologists gather weather data from around the world and use supercomputers and models to create the forecasts that help us plan our lives and stay safe. Your meteorologists-in-training will team up to gather real weather data outside the NSF NCAR classroom, then graph and analyze their own atmospheric data.

• Cloud Viewer: Use the downloadable cloud viewer to explore the clouds and sky outside.
• Create a Portable Cloud; A hands-on activity where students learn the conditions necessary for cloud formation.
• Drawing Clouds Inside the Lines: Students investigate how clouds change over time by making repeat observations of a section of the sky and graphing their data.
• A Clouds Image Gallery, with pictures and descriptions of different types of clouds.
• The Cloud Sorting Game: Sort clouds based on how high above the ground they form.
• The Clouds Memory Game: Use your memory to find the matching pairs of clouds.
• Clouds in the Air: Why Are They There?: A demonstration to explore air pressure, temperature, and volume and learn what is needed for clouds to form.
• The Clouds Teaching Box: A collection of classroom-ready activities, content, and multimedia resources to build student understanding about clouds.

Grades 4 - 8:

What’s Up with Climate Change? Earth’s Changing Weather, Over Time (Grades 4-8): Explore the basics of climate change, including greenhouse gases and their contribution to rising global temperatures, impacts of climate change in Colorado, and solutions for reducing human impact

• CO2: How Much Do You Spew?: Analyze the energy consumption of a hypothetical household to determine the amount of carbon dioxide they are adding to the atmosphere each year.
• Drip Drop! Music video and companion activity: Watch a climate change video as a springboard to engage in conversation about this important topic. Links to the lesson plan and other resources from this page as well.
• Climate Postcards: Learn about the climate zones of the world by interpreting graphed data and then identifying climate zones described in postcards.
• Greenhouse Gas Game: Learn about the heat-trapping properties of greenhouse gases as your team explores the relationship between human activity and climate change.
• Climate & Water Teaching Box: A collection of classroom-ready activities, content, and multimedia to build an understanding of the impacts of climate change over the 20th Century.
• The Very, Very Simple Climate Model Activity: Use a simple online model to learn about the relationship between average global temperature and carbon dioxide emissions.
• Analyzing Tree Ring Data Sequences: Align "tree ring cores" of different ages to build a timeline of past climate data.
• Climate Impacts Graph Matching: Match graphs showing aspects of observed climate change with statements that describe the observations.
• Climate Variability Card Shuffle: Use a deck of cards to model climate variability and longer-term trends.
• Hurricanes and Climate: Investigate maps and data to learn where and when hurricanes form and how climate change may be affecting them.
• Torrents, Droughts, and Twisters - Oh My!: Explore the relationship between extreme weather events and climate change.
• Feeling the Heat: Learn about the urban heat island effect by investigating which areas of the schoolyard have higher temperatures and analyze data showing the increase in heat waves over time with population.
• Raise the Roof on Urban Heat: Use a simple model to explore how roof colors can impact the temperature of an urban area.

Grades 9 - 12:

• The Systems Game: Play a game to understand how relationships between the parts and subparts of a system affect the entire system.
• Connections: Make connections and/or cause-and-effect relationships between nature and built environment phenomena.
• Hunting for the Pineapple Express: Identify the location of an atmospheric river (called the Pineapple Express) over the Pacific Ocean by analyzing water vapor data collected by COSMIC satellites.
• Studying CO2 from Pole to Pole: Analyze data sets that show how carbon dioxide varies through the atmosphere at different latitudes, altitudes, and times of the year.
• Weather and Climate Data Exploration: Explore the relationship between weather and climate by graphing temperature data and comparing it with climate averages.
• Demonstrating the Thickness of Atmospheric Layers: Use scale models of the atmosphere in this two-part activity to compare the height of Earth’s atmosphere to the size of the planet, and to learn about the thickness of the four main layers of the atmosphere.
• The Energy Balance & Greenhouse Effect Teaching Box: A collection of classroom-ready activities, content, and multimedia resources to build student understanding about the planetary energy balance and the Greenhouse Effect.