Earth Rangers

Earth Rangers is a website that encourages kids to participate in conservation efforts while teaching them about our world. It revolves around a fundraising campaign, Bring Back the Wild, where kids can raise money for a chosen animal on the site, but also contains lesson plans, videos, articles, and games. These activities explore ecological topics like invasive species, captive breeding programs, and water conservation.

From the Things to Do menu, kids can choose to play games, watch videos, discover animals, enter contests, and more. The Wild Wire Blog features all kinds of conservation content, including sections like "OMG Animals!" and "Take Action." Activities include "Get in the Habitat-Making Habit," a how-to for creating a butterfly, bird, or bat habitat.

On the surface, Earth Rangers appears to be a way to get kids to raise money for conservation. But if you dig deeper, you'll find a wealth of thoughtful learning activities that address topics like conservation, natural selection, and biodiversity. Video clips are short and will grab kids' attention; they're best used if you want to show examples of animals and their behaviors. The Wild Wire Blog section is a great resource for scientific text that kids will actually be interested in.

They've gathered a really nice set of well-organized and fun ecology activities. Lots of them get at the true nature of science, allowing kids to figure stuff out instead of simply memorize facts. "From Pattern to Principal: Discovering Science Through Observing Patterns in Nature" offers three different ways for kids to go outside, gather data, and discover a pattern that accounts for that data. Video clips range from informational to silly. Kids will crack up when they watch “Funny Talking Animals.” It doesn’t teach them very much about conservation, but the goofy vids may get kids more interested in exploring the more educational parts of the site. Blog articles are short and to the point, very accessible for kids. For example, “Climate Change is a Challenge for Narwhals” clearly describes how humans have impacted these tusked whales. Games, however, have limited learning value. In "Eco Invaders," there's a “Did You Know” fact listed at the bottom that tells kids about invasive species, but the game itself just involves shooting weapons and hand/eye coordination. However, there's so much great content on the site that the games can be used as a fun bonus activity.