Fifth grade science

Fifth grade is the year the child designs the investigation. Energy transformation, mixtures and solutions, circuits, landforms and ecosystems fill the content list, and every one of them can be taught as a question rather than an answer. The content matters. The design skill matters more, because that is what middle school assumes she already has.

• K
• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• 4th
• 5th

What to aim for this year

By the end of fifth grade, a child working at grade level can usually do these.

• Design an investigation of her own, including what to control and what to measure, and defend the design out loud.
• Demonstrate that matter is conserved when a substance changes form or dissolves.
• Separate a mixture using physical properties and explain why that method was the right one.
• Identify changes that can be reversed and changes that cannot, and support each with evidence.
• Trace energy through a system, including electrical, light, thermal and sound energy.
• Describe how sedimentary rock forms, and how deltas, canyons and dunes are built.
• Explain Earth's rotation and revolution and connect them to day, night and the year.
• Diagram a food web and predict what happens to it when one population changes.
• Explain how the Sun's energy enters an ecosystem through plants.
• Read a graph somebody else made and identify a claim it does not actually support.
• Write up an investigation clearly enough that another person could repeat it without asking questions.

Free, and legal to use

Every one of these costs nothing. The license tag says what you may actually do with it, which is not the same question as whether it is free to read.

• NASA Eyes Free See terms

  A suite of browser-based 3D visualizations running on real mission data. Eyes on the Solar System covers 1950 to 2050 with more than 150 missions, Eyes on the Earth shows live climate data, and there are separate views for asteroids and exoplanets. Rotation, orbit and scale are far easier to teach against a model that moves than against a diagram that does not.

  License: NASA content is generally not protected by copyright and may be copied and adapted. Third-party imagery hosted under permission is excluded. Insignia and endorsement limits apply to commercial use.

• USGS educational resources Free Public domain

  Sedimentary rock formation, landforms, deltas, canyons and dunes, from the agency that maps them, plus lesson plans, animations and hazard material. This grade names those landforms specifically, and USGS has photographs of real American examples of each, which beats a generic illustration.

  License: Public domain as a work of the United States government. Check the credit line under photographs from partner agencies.

• SciStarter Free See terms Not confirmed

  A directory of real citizen science projects a family can join, covering bird counts, water quality, light pollution and biodiversity. For a fifth grader learning to design an investigation, contributing data that a working researcher will actually use is the strongest motivation available, and joining costs nothing. It is a nonprofit with partners including NASA and National Geographic.

  License: Free to browse and join. The directory and each listed project set their own terms, and individual research teams have their own rules about data use and attribution. Check the terms on the specific project before publishing or reusing anything.

• Khan Academy Free Creative Commons Not confirmed

  Free video and practice with an account. The middle school physics and chemistry units are a reasonable stretch for a capable fifth grader, and the practice problems give the kind of self-checking a parent cannot easily supply at the kitchen table. Coverage of elementary science is thinner than its math coverage, which is worth knowing before you plan a year around it.

  License: Check the license. Free to use with an account. Much of the content has been offered under a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial reuse, but not all of it, and videos hosted on YouTube carry their own separate terms. Confirm before copying anything.

• CK-12 Free Creative Commons Not confirmed

  Free digital textbooks with simulations covering energy transformation, circuits, light and mixtures at about the level this grade needs, with enough depth for a strong student to push past it. You can assemble a custom book from only the chapters you want. Name given without a link because the site blocked my check.

  License: Check the license. CK-12 publishes under its own stated terms rather than a plain off-the-shelf Creative Commons license, and those terms have changed over time. Read the notice on the specific FlexBook before adapting or sharing it.

Paid programs, honestly

Nothing here is required. These are the programs families most often ask about, with the real drawback of each one named rather than skipped.

• Mystery Science Paid $199 list, $179 in August 2026, membership through June 30, 2027. A free trial runs to the same date.

  Good at: The fifth grade units on energy, matter and ecosystems are solid, and the habit of opening with a real phenomenon suits a child learning that questions come before answers.

  Drawback: Structurally at odds with the main goal of the year. The standard wants the child designing the investigation, and this program has already designed it, right down to the materials list. As the primary program in fifth grade it works against the year's central skill.

  Suits: Content support alongside investigations the child designs herself.

• Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, Volume II (Grades 3-5), Bernard J. Nebel Paid Commonly $30 to $40 per volume in paperback, less as an ebook. Not confirmed with the publisher.

  Good at: Finishes the elementary sequence with a child who has an actual conceptual framework rather than a stack of unit memories. A strong fifth grader can move into Volume III, aimed at the middle grades, without a change of method.

  Drawback: The lack of any scored checking is a real problem in the final elementary year, because this is the point where you want to know what stuck before middle school. The discussion prompts help, but you will have to build your own assessments, and most parents do not.

  Suits: A family finishing the sequence who will write their own end-of-year check.

• Elemental Science, Physics for the Grammar Stage Paid Around $22.50 for an ebook guide, $20 to $24 each for print components, optional kit near $55, plus outside reference books. Confirm the specific title.

  Good at: Scheduled weekly physics with scripted demonstrations covering forces, energy, light and circuits, which is a large share of the fifth grade list. Secular, cheap as an ebook, and it removes the weekly what-do-we-do-today decision.

  Drawback: Scripted demonstrations are the opposite of the design-your-own-experiment skill this year is built around. Use it for content, then deliberately hand your child unstructured problems, or the schedule will crowd out the thing that matters most. The outside book requirement adds cost as always.

  Suits: A secular family that wants physics scheduled and will protect time for open-ended work.

• Apologia, Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology Paid Build-your-own sets listed at $94.00, on sale at $70.50 in August 2026.

  Good at: Substantial, genuinely interesting, and the body is a subject a ten year old will stay with. The notebooking journal at this level produces work a child can be proud of, and the read-aloud format keeps a parent in the room.

  Drawback: Christian and creation-based, and anatomy is a subject where that framing runs through the book rather than sitting off to one side. It is also the wrong content year for Texas fifth grade, which is heavily physical and earth science, so choosing it means covering the state list elsewhere or accepting the gap on purpose.

  Suits: A Christian family that wants one absorbing read-aloud year and will handle the standards separately.

Prices are approximate and change often. Check with the publisher before you buy. We describe and link to these programs; none of their material is hosted here.

What a week looks like

1. Monday. Your child picks the question. Anything she can measure at home. Your only job is asking what she will control and what she will measure.
2. Tuesday. She runs it. Let a bad design fail, then ask what she would change, and write that down too.
3. Wednesday. Read one USGS or NASA page connected to the question, and see whether it changes her thinking.
4. Thursday. Second run with the fix. Compare the two sets of numbers side by side.
5. Friday. Write it up so a stranger could repeat it. Then hand it to someone and see whether they can.
6. Once a month. Submit real observations to a SciStarter project. Bird count, water sample, night sky brightness.

Practice it here, free

These rooms on this site cover part of the year's work. No sign-up, and they work offline.

• graph — Building and reading charts, which is how a self-designed investigation gets reported.
• measure — Measurement accuracy, and by now the child should be choosing the tool without being told.
• steps — Working through a multi-step procedure in order. The closest thing here to writing a method somebody else could follow.
• units — Units and conversion. Math content, still doing real work in a lab notebook.
• know — Honest note: nothing in this room reaches fifth grade science. The rooms on this site stop being useful for science content around third grade, and this year runs on the free agency material above.

The rest of fifth grade