The labs on this post tend to be popular, because they cover a lot of topics within the lab, build skills, and/or are engaging. You don’t need to do all of them! I do about half of the ones listed below. Some labs have links for the write-ups.
Read APES Lab Supplies Part 1 for Must-Do Labs
APES Lab Supplies for Popular Labs
- Coriolis Effect Lab
- Ecocolumns
- This is a favorite lab for kids and gives them long-term data collection and analysis. Click for the supplies for this lab. I have recommendations for cheap and more expensive supplies depending on your budget.
- Tragedy of the Commons: This lab has many great versions.
- Colored marshmallows, goldfish crackers, or candy are favorites. Some teachers use beads to be reusable. If you have large classes, marshmallows are the cheapest.
- Straws or chopsticks
- Tape
- Paper plates or paper towels
- Owl Pellets
- Large (preferred) or small owl pellets. One per pair or group.
- Gloves
- Dissection trays or paper plates
- Tweezers
- Reference sheets
- Biodiversity: There are many varieties of this lab that are used including:
- Parking lot biodiversity lab
- Needs no supplies
- Biodiversity of plants using quadrats
- Can make sampling squares, or use pieces of string or buy collapsible hoola hoops
- Tree biodiversity in forests (if you live by a forest).
- Need tree ID reference sheets
- Parking lot biodiversity lab
- Island Biogeography
- Many versions. Some use beans and funnels and meter sticks
- Others use birdseed, paper clips, cotton balls, beads etc to throw at paper islands.
- Primary Productivity and Light in the Ocean Lab
- Glasses Template from the teacher’s guide
- File folders to make glasses sturdy
- Blue plastic film-click for this one from Amazon that works well
- Colored felt-black, red, yellow, green, blue, orange and purple
- Color pictures of various deep sea organisms-found in the teacher’s guide. These can be printed in color or uploaded for kids to access online. My students accessed the pictures on Google Classroom
- Colored pencils
- Paper clips (optional)
- Toxins (Serial Dilultion and LD-50)
- Well plate
- Plastic Pipet
- Beaker for tap water
- Toothpicks
- Dropper bottle of a dye/stain/coloring such as a Food Grade Dye like FD&C Red Dye #40 Do not use regular food coloring as it dilutes much too quickly
- Trees, Forests and Deforestation
- Cardboard box
- Straws-can be paper straws or other eco-friendly straw
- 2 sewing measuring tapes per group
- Tree-Rings and Climate Change Lab
- You can purchase tree cookies on Amazon or Etsy. Its easier to buy them, but kids get more out of the lab if you can find local tree cookies.
- Rulers or Calipers
- Pins
- Simulated tree cores (pages 6 and 7 of this document)
- Hand lens (optional)
- Ocean Acidification
- Plastic cups: 4-5 per group
- Shells (ask kids to donate or ask seafood restaurants for oyster, clams and mussel shells). One small shell or piece of a larger shell per group.
- Vinegar or another acid
- pH meters or pH strips
- Scales-pocket or regular
- Plastic pipets
- Cemetery Lab for human population studies
- No pictures needed if you can walk to an old cemetery
- Or, pictures of tombstones taken from a local cemetery
- Or, simulate using paper tombstones in lab, you may want to decorate the lab with Halloween decorations. The dollar store is a good source.
- Or, use a cemetery database
- Plastic sleeves to save paper for some of the tables and charts.
- Vis-A-Vis pens or thin Expo markers if using laminated copies/plastic sleeves
- Oil Spill Cleanup
- Plastic containers or metal pans to hold water and simulate the ocean. One per group.
- Cotton Balls
- Straws
- Plastic pipets
- Cups or Beakers
- Vegetable or mineral oil
- Detergent
- Air Pollution Labs. There are a few good ones to choose from.
- Air Pollution Kit
- Ozone Lab using Test Strips
- Design a scrubber kit
- Air Particulates Experimental Design Lab
- Petri dishes-2 per student, if possible
- Vaseline
- Tape-blue painter’s tape is best as it can be removed easily to allow reuse of the dishes.
- Stereoscopes are best. Microscopes can also work using a low objective. Hand lens with a good light source work, but are more difficult for kids to use. A good light source is LED touch lights.
- Poster paper with markers (optional) for lab assessment
- Biomagnification Activity: Many great versions of the lap exist
- One version of the lab uses colored paperclips
- Another version uses pieces of laminated paper (shown below)
- Another version uses candy
- Kill-A-Watt Lab
- Need several kill-a-watt meters. I use 10 of them for kids to rotate stations
- You also need various electronic devices.
- Productivity–there are many versions of this lab also.
- One lab uses grass seeds, potting soil and pots
- Another lab uses bottles of water with algae and dissolved oxygen probes
- I do a video virtual lab
- You can also purchase a kit.
- Soil Profiles made out of food items
- Plastic parfait cups: one per student
- Vanilla and chocolate pudding: quantity depends on number of students.
- Oreo cookies
- Sprinkles
- Gummy worms: 2 per student
- Spoons
- Climate Change and Cities Experimental Design Lab
- IR Temperature guns OR regular thermometers/sensors
- Cookie Mining
- Generic chocolate chip cookies (1 per pair of students)
- Name-brand chocolate chip cookies
- Extra cookies to eat when finished
- Paper clips
- Toothpicks
- Scales-pocket or regular (optional)
- Solar Cookers (usually done after the AP® exam due to time requirements)
- Aluminum foil–a big restaurant-sized roll from Costco or Amazon will make a lot of solar cookers (40-50 of them)
- Packing tape or duct tape
- Masking tape
- Lots of boxes: I ask the food service on campus for empty boxes
- Empty cans to test water temperature
- Plastic wrap
- Thermometers
- IR Temperature guns (optional)
- Biological Oxygen Demand (sometimes done with a water quality lab)
- I do as a virtual lab
- If you do as a regular lab, you will need a dissolved oxygen test kit or dissolved oxygen probes
- Tree Ring Studies for climate change
- Need various “tree cookies” (tree slices)
- Or, use a kit that simulates tree cores
- Trees and Forests 5E
- tape measures
- Homemade (I use the homemade ones) or purchased clinometers
- Chalk Drawing: The best chalk is from IKEA–seriously. A few boxes will last the entire year or more. Since I teach 170 students in APES, this is the best option for me. Neon Expo Markers are another good option.
Other Basic Supplies
I use these items frequently for many labs
Sharpies (need 10 black for the year)
Spoons (need 1 box for labs)
De-chlorine drops for fish tanks
Filters for fish tank
Aquarium light bulbs
Fish food
Colored markers (Crayola or similar) for lab conclusion posters
Painter’s tape for marking beakers, lab apparatus
Hand Sanitizer-large container for classroom
Batteries for various sensors and probes
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