This resource supports learning about animals, including humans at primary level. Children are introduced to the banded mongoose, an animal which uses its sense of smell to recognise other banded mongooses. They then play a game to test how good they are at using smell to identify each other. Finally, they explore...

This guide, from the National STEM Learning Centre and Network, draws on the advice of a number of experienced senior science technicians on how to set up a technician network. A local science technician network is a great way to share expertise, solve problems, gather ideas and to carry out cost effective...

This series of spotter sheets are useful when identifying living things in their habitats at different times of the year. They contain sheets for each of the seasons include sheets which help to identify:

This short video introduces an estate electrician at a zoo. He outlines the responsibilities he has in order to keep the animals safe and happy, from ultra violet light to heaters in winter.

From NASA, this is a set of high quality images and information about the solar system. The set of materials features the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Earth’s Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, asteroids, comets, meteors and meteorites, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, and moons of the solar system...

This activity introduces children to simulations - modelling or acting out real-world, or maybe imaginary, situations. Linking to the teaching of space, it asks what factors need to be considered when simulating the solar system. Out of these, the children then decide what the most important things to include in...

This resource provides a selection of lesson plans, worksheets and teachers notes relating to sound at Year Four. They include activities which show that sounds are made when objects vibrate and that sounds travel through solids, liquids and gases. They also look at the structure of the ear, how vibrations are...

Tim Peake is a European Space Agency astronaut. This resource gives background to Tim’s training leading up to his mission in 2015/16 to the International Space Station. Tim is shown in survival training, in the swimming pool training for microgravity, and in the centrifuge at the European Astronaut Centre to...

This Practical Action resource presents a fun hands-on and brains-on challenge for Key Stages Two to Five.

The problem:...

A useful handbook for setting up a student-led STEM club, with exemplars from three schools.

It is increasingly recognised that giving students opportunities to act as ambassadors and mentors for STEM subjects outside of school can be of great benefit to the individual, their institution, and to the broader...

This resource, aimed at primary level, links to work on light and Earth and Space. Looking first at the principles behind how a telescope works, it provides activities in which children explore the nature of light, the role of concave and convex lenses in focussing light to form an image and on making a ‘Home TV’....

Produced by ARKive, these materials include a series of activities that introduce children to the plants and animals of the temperate rainforest in the Pacific Northwest (USA). Children conduct a hands-on investigation of the living things in a small local ecosystem, catalogue their findings and then compare their...

This activity looks at the shape of the Earth and the reasons why we have day and night. It includes a game “The Earth goes on a Spin”; in which children role-play the Sun and the Earth. In other activities children think about the sounds that are heard during day and night. The activities require the use of an...