First grade science

First grade is the year a child runs an investigation, even a very small one. Plant parts, life cycles, the seasons, water, soil, and the start of light and sound. Texas leans on recording what happened, so a cheap notebook does more work here than any kit.

• K
• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• 4th
• 5th

What to aim for this year

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

• Plan and carry out a simple descriptive investigation, then record the result in words, numbers or a labeled drawing.
• Classify objects by physical properties including texture, flexibility and relative temperature.
• Name the parts of a plant and explain what each part does for the plant.
• Compare the life cycles of two animals and describe how the young resemble the adults.
• Track the weather across a season and describe the pattern that shows up.
• Identify where fresh water is found, how a household uses it, and one way to use less of it.
• Explain that the Sun warms the land, the air and the water.
• Show that changing the strength or direction of a push changes how an object moves.
• Describe what soil is made of and why a plant needs it.
• Explain how light lets you see an object, and make a shadow larger and smaller on purpose.
• Measure with a ruler and write down the number instead of saying about this big.

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.

• Handbook of Nature-Study, Anna Botsford Comstock (1911) Free Public domain

  A long field guide written for teachers with no science training, organized as outdoor lessons on plants, birds, insects, soil, rocks and weather. It assumes you are standing outside looking at the thing, which is exactly the first grade posture. Skip around; nobody reads it front to back.

  License: Public domain in the United States. Published 1911, author died in 1930, so the text and the illustrations are free for any use including commercial. I confirmed the full text is on Project Gutenberg.

• USGS Water Science School Free Public domain

  The Geological Survey's plain-language site on where water is, how it moves, and why it matters. Covers the water bodies work and the conservation work together, with printable diagrams at several complexity levels. There is a full Spanish version, Escuela de Ciencias del Agua, if that helps your household.

  License: Public domain as a work of the United States government. Check the credit line under photographs, since a few come from partner agencies or outside photographers.

• NOAA Ocean Service education Free Public domain

  Short plain-answer explanations on tides, currents, coasts and how the ocean shapes weather, split into sections for educators, students and kids. Useful for the fresh water versus salt water comparison, and a Gulf Coast family gets to point at a map of water they have actually stood in.

  License: Public domain as a work of the United States government, with the same caution about credited third-party photographs.

• Exploratorium Science Snacks Free Creative Commons Not confirmed

  Single-concept demonstrations with a materials list and the explanation behind them. The light and shadow builds belong at this grade rather than kindergarten, since first grade is where light behavior is formally taught. Search their site for Science Snacks.

  License: Check the license. Snack pages have carried a Creative Commons notice including NonCommercial and ShareAlike terms, but I could not confirm the current version, so read the notice on the page you use. A ShareAlike term would attach to anything you make from it.

• PBS LearningMedia Free Free to use Not confirmed

  Free with an account. The K-2 collections on animal life cycles, habitats and states of matter give you a short clip to open a lesson and a printable to follow it. The site sends you to your regional station, which for this area is Houston Public Media.

  License: Free to use with a free account, still fully copyrighted. Educational, non-commercial use with attribution, no redistribution. Read the terms page before you build on 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, seen at $179 in August 2026, with membership running through June 30, 2027. Verify at checkout.

  Good at: The first grade units on animal needs, plant parts and weather line up closely with the Texas strands, and each ends with an activity you can do from the pantry. A parent who dreads planning gets a year of it decided.

  Drawback: First grade is the year a child should plan a tiny investigation herself, and a scripted video lesson does that planning for her. Used as the whole program it can quietly train a passive habit right when the standard asks for the opposite.

  Suits: A family that needs the year handled and will add their own notebook work on top.

• Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, Volume I (Grades K-2), Bernard J. Nebel Paid Commonly $30 to $40 paperback, less as an ebook. Publisher pricing not confirmed, so check before ordering.

  Good at: The threads on matter and on living things are built up rather than announced, so a child arrives at each idea having assembled it. One book covers three grades, which makes it the cheapest serious option here.

  Drawback: No pacing calendar. You decide what happens each week, and the thread structure means the obvious next lesson is often not the right one. Families who need a printed schedule should pair it with one or look elsewhere.

  Suits: A parent who will read ahead and wants the concepts in the right order.

• Berean Builders, Science in the Beginning (Jay Wile) Paid $43.00 for the textbook, confirmed on the publisher's site in August 2026. Sets including the helps and hints volume cost more.

  Good at: Every lesson is built around an activity rather than a reading, which suits a six year old better than a textbook does. Three review levels per lesson let one book serve a first grader and a fourth grader in the same sitting.

  Drawback: Explicitly young-earth creationist and organized around the days of creation as its outline, so the sequence follows a theological frame rather than a conceptual or standards-based one. That is a deliberate design choice rather than a defect, but secular families should skip it and some Christian families will want to know before ordering.

  Suits: A young-earth Christian family teaching several ages at one table.

• Elemental Science, Biology for the Grammar Stage Paid Ebook $22.50, workbook $19.99, teacher guide $23.99, optional kit $54.99, checked August 2026. Outside reference books are extra.

  Good at: Thirty-six planned weeks with scripted demonstrations, which removes the decision fatigue that kills homeschool science by February. Life cycles and plant parts get thorough treatment, and both are first grade content.

  Drawback: It is a biology year. The Texas first grade list is roughly half earth science and physical science, so this on its own leaves soil, water, heat and forces uncovered. You will be supplementing, and the outside book list adds real cost.

  Suits: A secular family that wants a scheduled life science year and will cover the other half 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. Read one Handbook of Nature-Study lesson, then go find the thing it describes. Ten minutes each.
2. Tuesday. Run one small investigation with a question you can answer in a day. Does the bean in the closet grow like the bean on the windowsill?
3. Wednesday. One PBS clip, then a drawing labeled with the words from the clip. Labels matter more than the drawing.
4. Thursday. Measure something and write the number in the notebook. Height of the bean, temperature on the porch, inches of rain in a jar.
5. Friday. Look back at the week's notebook pages and say what changed. This is the whole point of keeping it.

Practice it here, free

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

• know — Plants, seasons and the body. Three of the eight topics land inside first grade life science.
• shadows — Light and shadow, which is where this belongs on the standards. The room is a game, so treat it as a warm-up to real shadow tracing outside.
• measure — Reading a ruler and writing the number down. This is a math room, and it is the single most useful math room for science this year.
• graph — Turning a set of observations into a picture. Supports the recording habit; teaches no science content.
• units — Units and what they are for. Same note as above: a math room doing science work.

The rest of first grade