T-K & Kindergarten 

Just like tidepools, pond life is living "on the edge." Ponds are pockets of water bounded by land. Lots of pond dwellers spend their time entirely in the water, but quite a diversity of life can be found along the boundaries between water and air and water and land. Each living thing — fish, snail, lily pad, frog, water strider, or turtle — is interconnected and makes a unique living in this freshwater habitat.

Grade 1 

Environments don't get much more extreme than the Rocky Seashore. Imagine a world pounded by thousands of crashing waves each day. Competition for a place to live is fierce between the daily coming and going of the tides. Yet life not only survives... it thrives!

Grade 2 

It takes some detective work to "read" a sandy beach. Evidence of life is everywhere, but the actual life may be hard to find. Footprints, feathers, seaweed, shells, garbage, and oil may tell a story of who has visited a sandy beach. Even the shifting sands tell a story of formation, erosion and seasonal cycles of this coastal ecosystem.

Grade 3 

 Coastal wetlands — bays, estuaries, salt marshes, and lagoons — are special places where freshwater meets the salty ocean. There are many different ways to think of wetlands: as ocean nurseries, storm sponges, water filters, and rest stops for birds. But it's also true that wetlands are sensitive and rapidly vanishing coastal ecosystems. 

Grade 4  

 Gazing from shore at the gently swaying surface of a kelp forest canopy, it's difficult to imagine the activity below. But from holdfast to blade this algal forest is home to bizarre invertebrates and fish of every imaginable color, size, and form. It's also the unique home of the endangered, yet recovering, sea otter.

Grade 5 

Far from shore, where the ocean horizon touches the sky is the vast region called open ocean. Equally home to microscopic plankton and titanic whales, this single, global ocean covers almost three quarters of Earth's surface. Never still, winds and ocean currents move food, nutrients, animals, algae, ships, garbage... anything. Movement of ocean water also creates pockets of amazing productivity that can be depleted from over-fishing.Click the links below to view project assignment details Project Resources (& Awesome TED videos)    Project Planning Worksheet

Grade 6  

Isolated from the mainland, islands can be considered living laboratories for evolution. Competition for limited resources can result in unique (and often endangered) species. Islands can also be resting and breeding places for birds and pinnipeds.

Grade 7/8 

Often called “rainforests of the sea”, coral reefs form some of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. They occupy less than one tenth of one percent of the world ocean surface, about half the area of France, yet they provide a home for twenty-five percent of all marine species, including fish, molluscs, worms, crustaceans, echinoderms, sponges, tunicates and other cnidarians.[2]Paradoxically, coral reefs flourish even though they are surrounded by ocean waters that provide few nutrients. They are most commonly found at shallow depths in tropical waters, but deep water and cold water corals also exist on smaller scales in other areas.