A Rocket & Raven series
A free online life-science course for Grades 6 to 8: cells, body systems, senses, photosynthesis, growth and reproduction strategies at a kitchen windowsill, plus a growing-station design project.
Cells and Systems is a free online life-science course for Grades 6 to 8 that uses only things a family already has: glass jars, paper towels, dried bean seeds, a hand lens, a ruler, a timer, a flashlight and a leaf or flower from outside. Students set up the Windowsill at home, keep a Windowsill Log, and work the same questions as Rocket, Raven and Nova. Week by week they sort living from non-living, watch single cells make a balloon rise, build a cell model, compare plant and animal cells, follow cells to tissues to organs with their own pulse, feel body systems work together after a run, test reaction time and memory, trap a leaf in the dark to see what light does, model how food is taken apart and rebuilt, grow seeds in light and dark, and look at how flowers, seeds and nests help living things make more of themselves. It ends with a windowsill growing station the student designs, builds, tests and improves. Every fact comes from a National Institutes of Health, OpenStax, NASA or USDA page listed in the course sources. Short lessons run Monday to Friday, with a hands-on Windowsill Lab each week, and Saturday is Nature Day with the family.
The course is free, start to finish.
Free online life-science course · 12 weeks
A kitchen-windowsill life-science lab: cells, body systems, senses, photosynthesis, growth, reproduction strategies and a growing-station design project.
Nothing. Cells and Systems is free from start to finish, with no card. A free parent account saves each student's progress.
Clean glass jars or plastic cups, paper towels, a handful of dried beans or lentils from the pantry, a hand lens or a phone camera, a ruler, a kitchen or phone timer, a flashlight, foil or dark paper and a paper clip, a celery stalk, a balloon, a packet of baking yeast and a spoon of sugar, a clear plastic bag with string and beads, a small mirror, and a leaf and a flower from outside.
Nothing is tasted or eaten during a lab, a grown-up handles cutting and warm water, exercise labs are gentle and on flat ground, and flowers, bees and nests are watched from where you stand. Every hands-on activity carries a safety note. A pulse or breath count is a science reading, never medical advice.
No. Cells are too small to see with a hand lens, so the course gives evidence another way: single-celled yeast making gas, celery carrying tinted water through its tissue, and sourced size tables read on Thursdays. A hand lens is enough for leaves, flowers and seeds.
The way the middle-school standard asks: behaviors and structures that raise the chance of success, such as bright flowers for pollinators, seeds that travel on wind and fur, nests that shelter young and herds that protect them. No human or animal anatomy.