1st grade Science: how to help at home
What your child learns in 1st grade science in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), and simple things to try at home.
Focus areas this year
- Sorting objects, heating and cooling, pushes and pulls
- Seasons, soil, bodies of water and saving water
- Living and nonliving things, food chains and animal life cycles
Easy ways to practice science at home
- Go on a nature walk and name what you see: leaves, bugs, clouds, puddles.
- Plant a bean seed and check it together each day.
- Ask “What do you notice?” before you explain anything.
- Talk about the weather each morning and what to wear for it.
What each unit covers
Length, Area & Weight
Objects have properties we can measure: how long, how much flat space they cover (area) and how heavy they are. Children compare objects directly and see how bending, cutting, stretching and squishing change an object.
Objects & Structures
Structures that hold up a load, what everyday objects are for, how fasteners join things, and where materials such as wood and wool come from.
Living Things
Sorting living and non-living things, telling plants from animals, and what living things need to grow.
Ideas from Nature
Practices how plants and animals use their outside parts to survive, and how people copy those parts to design solutions, like burrs and hook-and-loop straps.
Sky & Seasons
Day and night, the sun, moon and stars (the moon reflects sunlight), and the order of the seasons.
How Things Move
Children describe how objects and animals move: the direction, the pathway (straight, curved, zigzag, circle) and the speed. They see that a push, a surface or a ramp changes the movement.
Parents & Babies
Practices how animal parents feed, protect and teach their young, and how young plants and animals are like, but not exactly like, their parents.
Hot & Cold Changes
Practices how heating and cooling change materials, everyday uses of heat such as cooking and drying clothes, and which heat changes can be undone (melting butter) and which cannot (cooking an egg).
Soil & Water
Practices comparing topsoil, clay and sand, how water moves soil and rock, the differences between puddles, ponds, rivers, lakes and oceans (fresh or salt water), weather words, how living things use rocks, soil and water, and ways to save water and keep it clean.
Who Eats What?
Practices simple food chains (grass is eaten by a grasshopper, which is eaten by a bird) and how plants and animals in a terrarium or aquarium depend on water, light, air, soil and each other.
Bird, Mammal & Fish Life Cycles
Practices the basic life cycles of a bird (egg, chick, adult), a mammal (born live, young drinks milk, adult) and a fish (egg, fry, adult).
What the report card levels look like at home
- Beginning
- Just getting started with this idea. Short, regular practice with lots of support helps most.
- Approaching
- Understands parts of it and is building confidence. Keep practicing the tricky parts.
- Meeting
- Has it! Mixed review now and then keeps it strong.
- Exceeding
- Applies it confidently, even in new or harder situations. Try challenge mode and real-life problems.
Your child’s teacher decides the level on the report card. Read the Texas report card guide.
Common questions
Go on a nature walk and name what you see: leaves, bugs, clouds, puddles. Plant a bean seed and check it together each day. Keep sessions short, about 10 to 15 minutes, and stop on a success.
The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) 1st grade science units include Length, Area & Weight, Objects & Structures, Living Things, Ideas from Nature, Sky & Seasons, How Things Move.
Free printable 1st grade science practice sheet
Questions from every unit, with an answer key.