When the primary team at STEM Learning first heard that schools were having to close to the majority of pupils, we put our heads together and thought, what will schools and parents find useful for home learning? We decided to produce something that was easy to resource, easy to explain and something that children could mainly do on their own. We knew many parents were going to be juggling work and home schooling.
This was when Starters for STEM was born. A weekly selection of 10 engaging STEM activities, one sheet, easy to print and easily shared with parents. The activities were not age based and most could be completed by all primary aged children. They covered all four STEM subjects, Science, Technology (Computing), Engineering (D&T) and Maths and were hopefully easy to follow. From March to July, 18 weeks, we uploaded one every week and they were very popular on the STEM website. They’re still there and will be for the foreseeable future.
With the success of the Starters for STEM we started to think about how we could use this concept to support teachers with more targeted curriculum support, something that could be used for ideas for topics or sent home to support home learning in science. From this we developed Starters for Science. These are year group and topic linked, easy to resource and carry out at home. The Starters for Science are one page and include learning from the national curriculum, key vocabulary and activities that will compliment school based work. We believe these will be particularly useful in supporting any learning that may have been missed during the partial school closures.
As they cover all the national curriculum science topics they could be used as school planning tools to ensure coverage of all the topics. We have made vey effort to avoid overlapping or repetition of activities. The Starters for Science include activities for the EYFS linked to common themes found in the reception classroom, and can be used as investigation activities within the setting.
Don't forget to share how you are using the activities via Twitter, our handle is @STEMLearningUK. We can't wait to hear how you are finding the activities!
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