Science root words, printable and online games

Help your children learn tricky science words with these free primary science resources from our resource HUB.

There’s no getting away from it – science words are big. Even some of the words that our children encounter from a really early age can be pretty daunting – think about herbivore, dehydration even microscope can be pretty challenging to remember when you are also learning tens of other new words a day.

Luckily, although us scientists might be fans of overcomplicated words, we are (mainly) quite logical so by teaching children a few root words to recognise, we can give them a clue as to what the word is about and how to decode it which is a brilliant shortcut to teaching scientific vocabulary.

The resource contains 2 printable pdf sheets with 18 root words and their meanings and a link to 2 online games:

1. The root word matcher - using the same pictures as in the printables, children can match up the root word to it’s meaning.
2. Decode the word - using the root words in the printable, the task is to match up the word to it’s description.

The games are perfect to use on a whiteboard as a class or on individual devices.