United States · Common Core State Standards
1st Grade Science
A comprehensive first grade science curriculum that invites students to investigate the physical world, living organisms, and celestial patterns. Students engage in hands-on inquiry to understand how light and sound travel, how plants and animals survive, and how the sky changes over time.
Light and Sound Waves
Students investigate how light and sound travel and interact with different materials to communicate over distances.
Exploring how vibrations create sounds and how those sounds can be changed or stopped.
Investigating how light travels and what happens when it hits clear, cloudy, or solid objects.
Designing devices that use light or sound to send messages across a distance.
Plant and Animal Survival
An exploration of how living things use their external parts to grow, survive, and meet their basic needs.
Examining the different body parts animals and plants use to find food, water, and protection.
Comparing how young plants and animals are similar to, but not exactly like, their parents.
Using ideas from nature to solve human problems through engineering and design.
Patterns in the Sky
Observing and recording the predictable patterns of the sun, moon, and stars throughout the year.
Tracking the movement of the sun and moon to identify patterns that repeat every day and month.
Analyzing data to understand why we have more daylight in the summer than in the winter.
Identifying that stars are always in the sky but are only visible when it is dark.
Engineering and Design Solutions
Applying scientific knowledge to define problems and develop tools that help people.
Learning how to ask questions and observe situations to identify a problem that needs solving.
Using sketches and physical models to show how a new tool might solve a specific problem.
Comparing two objects to see which one performs better at solving a given task.