We love teaching and making resources to promote enjoyment, motivation, and understanding for children and teachers with a particular passion for learning outside the classroom.
We love teaching and making resources to promote enjoyment, motivation, and understanding for children and teachers with a particular passion for learning outside the classroom.
This activity gets students exploring the wildlife in your pond by making their very own underwater viewer using just a plastic bottle, some tape, and scissors. It’s a fantastic activity if you’re looking at living things, habitats, or just want to give your students some time to explore this amazing world.
Teaching Structure:
Get the students to make their underwater viewers. Younger students may need help with this.
Give them time to use the viewers to explore the wildlife in your pond. Either during or after exploring they can complete the differentiated sheets recording their observations.
For higher grade levels you can get them to use books and the internet to ID what they see. Please note: There are obvious risks involved with this activity and there must be measures in place.
We suggest getting all students to lie down on an area close to the water level before using the viewers. Check out our risk assessment creator to produce a risk assessment quickly and easily.
We hope you find this pack useful and enjoy working outside with your class!
Check out our Outdoor Science Bundle.
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This is a great STEM project to get students exploring the local weather as they design and build their very own wind vanes before recording the wind direction over a given time period. This projects is great if you’re looking at points of the compass, the weather, fractions, or as a fun STEM challenge.
Teaching Structure:
Talk about what a wind vane is and why they can be useful.
In small groups, complete the design sheet by getting students to think of their own ideas about how to build a wind vane. If you don’t want to do this, just use the example design.
Share each idea and discuss whether they’ll work or not.
Share the example design. - Complete the final design sheet if their designs have changed.
Build the wind vane.
Place the wind vane in a suitable location and complete the record sheet over a given time period. It can be interesting to put each group in a different place and then compare their results to see any variations in wind directions.
Complete the evaluation questions.
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This is a great outdoor experiment that demonstrates how the earth is kept warm enough for life (as well as global warming) through the greenhouse effect.
They will carry out an experiment comparing the difference in temperature between the air in a glass jar compared to the air outside of the jar. This demonstrates the effect the greenhouse gases have on the Earth.
They will go onto think about what happens when we add to the greenhouse gases and the effect this has on the Earth’s temperature.
**Equipment needed: **tall jar, 2 x thermometers, 2 x pieces of white card, timer, sunshine & an activity pack.
Teaching Structure:
Ask the students how they think the Earth is kept warm. Explain that there are gases in the atmosphere that trap the warming radiation in and keep the Earth warm.
Explain that they are going to demonstrate this process by looking how the air warms up in a glass compared to the air outside of the glass.
Get the students to complete the method sheet.
Place 2 pieces of white card on the floor in a sunny spot (to keep the floor variable the same).
Put the jar with a thermometer in on one piece of card and put the lid on (if the lid is opaque put the jar upside down). Place the other thermometer on the other bit of card.
Record the temperature of both thermometers at the decided intervals and record the results in the table.
Complete the discussion questions and evaluation sheet.
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For this outdoor science investigation your students will become weather forecasters using only the clouds! Different kinds of clouds can give us a very good indication as to what weather is likely to follow. Your students will keep a record of the cloud types as well as the weather which follows for a few days / week before analysing their data to see if they can spot any patterns between the cloud types and the type of weather which follows.
This investigation is great if you’re looking at weather, forecasting, pattern spotting, and investigation skills. Before you start the investigation, explain that before modern weather forecasts many people would depend on their knowledge of the clouds to predict the weather and help to keep them safe.
Get the students to complete the table, recording the cloud types and the weather in the following days.
Once they’ve done this for a good amount of time (9 or 10 days) they can then look at their data and see if they can spot any relationships between the cloud types and the weather which followed.
Once they’ve analysed their data they can complete the investigation evaluation questions.
Extension - Get them to complete the research sheet to see if their results were correct.
Before you get the students to do their diary, it’s worth looking at the weather forecast to try and choose a period with varied weather.
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Growing plants is great fun and can lead to loads of teaching opportunities. For this activity students will plant a variety of species and measure their growth rate over time.
The students first look at how they can carry out this investigation, completing an investigation plan. After the seeds are planted they’ll measure the height of each plant every week and record their findings on the table.
As part of the sheet they’ll need to work out differences in heights.
We suggest using 4 - 5 different types of plants, ideally ones with a clear difference in growth rate. How you carry this investigation out depends greatly on the space you have available. You may choose to use separate plant pots or maybe you have a veg patch available.
It’s good to discuss the importance of the plants being in the same locations. Why is the sun important for plants? Why is water important? You can go into as much or little detail as needed in these discussions.
It can be useful to set up a timetable of who is going to care for the plants each day. If you choose to use fruits or vegetables (highly recommended!) you can then go onto use these as another stimulus for activities.
Suggested Plants:
Tomato
Spinach
Baby Carrots
Bush Beans
Green Onions
Summer Squash
Beets
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Growing plants is great fun and can lead to loads of teaching opportunities. For this activity students will plant a variety of species and measure their growth rate over time. The students first look at how they can carry out this investigation, completing an investigation plan.
After the seeds are planted they’ll measure the height of each plant every week and record their findings on the table. As part of the sheet they’ll need to work out differences in heights. We suggest using 4 - 5 different types of plants, ideally ones with a clear difference in growth rate.
How you carry this investigation out depends greatly on the space you have available. You may choose to use separate plant pots or maybe you have a veg patch available. It’s good to discuss the importance of the plants being in the same locations. Why is the sun important for plants? Why is water important? You can go into as much or little detail as needed in these discussions.
It can be useful to set up a timetable of who is going to care for the plants each day. If you choose to use fruits or vegetables (highly recommended!) you can then go onto use these as another stimulus for activities.
Suggested Plants:
Tomato
Spinach
Baby Carrots
Bush Beans
Green Onions
Summer Squash
Beets
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Growing plants is great fun and can lead to loads of teaching opportunities. For this activity students will plant a variety of species and measure their growth rate over time. The students will measure the height of each plant every week and record their findings on the table as well as drawing a picture of the plants.
We suggest using 4 - 5 different types of plants, ideally ones with a clear difference in growth rate. How you carry this investigation out depends greatly on the space you have available. You may choose to use separate plant pots or maybe you have a veg patch available.
It’s good to discuss the importance of the plants being in the same locations. Why is the sun important for plants? Why is water important? You can go into as much or little detail as needed in these discussions.
It can be useful to set up a timetable of who is going to care for the plants each day. If you choose to use fruits or vegetables (highly recommended!) you can then go onto use these as another stimulus for activities.
Suggested Plants:
Tomato
Spinach
Baby Carrots
Bush Beans
Green Onions
Summer Squash
Beets
Please don’t forget to rate this resource to let us know what you think.
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This outdoor STEM activity gets students thinking and questioning what properties make something either float or sink. They will be faced with the challenge to get a stone to float using only natural materials, string, and tape.
Equipment:
Stones (roughly the size of a golf ball - the bigger the stone the more the challenge)
Tape
String
Bowl / tub of water
Teaching Structure:
Get students to think of examples of items that both float and sink. Encourage them to start thinking about what it is that makes them float or sink. Explain that their mission is to make a stone float using only natural materials before the end of the lesson. Put students into groups of 2 or 3 and get them to complete the mind map sheet.
Once they’ve discussed their ideas, set them off on their challenge. We find 15 - 20 minutes is enough time for this part of the lesson. It’s a good idea to limit the amount of string and tape they can use. The less string and tape used the more the challenge.
Once students have successfully made their stone float or the time has run out get them to complete the evaluation sheet or simply discuss the questions on the task cards. The task cards can be placed at different points in your outdoor space.
Finally, get students to share their thoughts and ideas as a whole class.
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This diary writing & research project is a great way to get your class learning about and having fun with first person narrative in the form of diary writing (recounts) in the outdoors. This differentiated resource has been used very successful with grades 2 – 5 (years 3 - 6).
The children are to choose a min-beast and spend a few days finding, exploring, and researching their chosen mini-beast. They will then have great fun planning and writing a diary entry for their chosen mini-beast based around ‘a day in the life of’.
Contents:
- Teacher’s Guide
- Mini-Beast Identification Sheet
- 2 x differentiated drawing sheets
- Instructions Sheet
- Diary Extract Eample
- 2 x differentiated research templates
- 1 x Diary Writing Checklist
- 1 x planning sheet
- 2 x Differentiated writing checklists
This resource is a great way to get the children exploring the outdoor while learning about a key writing style.
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Enjoy!
This STEM activity is all about the negative effects that plastic pollution in our oceans is having on humans and the environment. Students will be challenged to design and create their very own invention to help save our ocean plastic crisis.
Contents:
Teacher Guide
Invention Example
Differentiated Design Sheets
Differentiated Final Idea Pan
Differentiated Evaluation Questions
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This activity looks closely at how different skeletons are made up, encouraging children to think about how different animals are able to move in different ways depending on their skeleton.
This activity works best in groups.
Give each child an animal card and ask them to create the animals skeleton using sticks, thinking carefully about how the animal moves. Once they have done this and you have allowed for sufficient discussion both with each other and an adult, give them the animals skeleton card and let them see how they have done.
They can then take another animal to try. You’ll be amazed at the improvement of their skeletons over the course of one lesson!
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Contents:
A normal and skeleton sheet for each of the following
Human
Fish
Frog
Snake
Elephant
Horse
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The insect trap investigation gets students looking closely at all the amazing creepy crawlies that can be found in your outdoor space by creating small traps. It’s great if you’re looking at living things, habitats, or data handling as well as developing key investigation skills.
**Ages 4 - 6: **Students will set the traps and observe what they collect. At this age it’s great for them to explore the wildlife, talking about their looks, how they move, key features, and other general observations. Once they’ve had time to study what they’ve trapped they can compete the observation sheet where they’ll draw what they’ve collected.
**Ages 7 - 9 & 10 - 12: **Students will set the traps and wait to see what crawls inside (checking each day for a few days. They’ll identify the creatures and record their results on the results table. They can then use their results to create a bar graph of their findings (you can choose to accumulate all the results or just use individuals). After that, get them to complete the evaluation question sheets which will encourage them to think about how successful their traps were and the reasons behind their results.
Equipment needed:
Activity pack
Trowel
Yogurt pot
Tray
Card
Stones
ID Guide (optional)
Check out our outdoor science bundle here.
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Get your class engaged with your forces and motion topic from the very start with this exciting outdoor science scavenger hunt activity. It’s also a fantastic way to assess what your class already know or have learnt during the forces and motion topic.
It’s a hassle free resource with minimum prep, designed to engage students with a wide range of learning styles.
This pack contains 10 challenge task cards that cover the following areas:
Air resistance
Gravity
Floating and sinking
Friction
Magnetism
My class had great fun in the outdoors while learning and recapping their skills. A fantastic lesson when the sun in shining!
Contents
Teacher’s Guide
8 x Differentiated Answer Sheets For The Children To Complete
10 x Challenge Task Cards
Top Tip: Laminate your cards so they can be used time and time again!
Resources needed for cards:
1 - Leaves
2 - A4 and A3 paper
3 - Sticks
4 - Magnets
5 - Toy car
6 - Bucket of water
7 - Tennis ball & similar sized plastic ball
8 - Football / basketball
9 - Bin bag / similar
10 - Tennis ball & similar sized plastic ball
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Get your class engaged with your living things topic from the very start with this exciting outdoor science scavenger hunt activity. It’s also a fantastic way to assess what your class already know or have learnt during the living things topic. It’s a hassle free resource with minimum prep, designed to engage students with a wide range of learning styles.
This pack contains 10 challenge task cards that cover the following areas:
Camouflage
Food Chains
Habitats
Identification / Classification
Observation Skills
The Human Body
My class had great fun in the outdoors while learning and recapping their skills. A fantastic lesson when the sun in shining!
Contents
Teacher’s Guide
8 x Differentiated Answer Sheets For The Children To Complete
10 x Challenge Task Cards
Top Tip: Laminate your cards so they can be used time and time again!
Check out our Outdoor Science Bundle here.
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This bundle includes printable word unscramble and definition matching worksheets, perfect for reinforcing key terms within your “Living Things” topic. Students will have fun unscrambling the terms before matching them to the correct classification definition.
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This bundle contains activities for:
Animal Classification
Camouflage & Mimicry
Habitats
Animal Adaptation
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We have found these really useful to have ready for a filler activity for your early finishers to practise the topics keys terms.
Woodland tracker is a great way to investigate which animals are sneaking around in your outdoor space or local woodland. It’s a great activity if you’re looking at observation skills or habitats and can be differentiated for all age ranges. For this practical science investigation students will mark out an area using sand or fine soil and leave it overnight before returning to see if they can spot and identify any animal tracks that have been left behind.
This can be done as a one off investigation or as an ongoing project where you could introduce different variables such as location, season or food.
Contents:
Teacher’s Guide
2 x Match The Tracks activity sheet and answers(US & British animals)
2 x Investigation Method worksheets
3 x Results Table
4 x Investigation Question Cards
2 x Evaluation Question Sheets
To further differentiate this activity, get students to carry it out multiple times choosing something to change. They can complete the investigation method sheet and questions to help guide them through this.
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Imagine if insects had a social media platform… well now they do! Your class will think like an insect and create a ‘bugbook’ page for their chosen insect. This is a great cross-curricular activity that will firstly get students looking at the features, habitats, and characteristics of insects in their outdoor space as well as practicing their non-fiction writing and research skills.
It’s great when looking at description writing and non-fiction texts. You can also use this as a base to talk about internet safety using the question prompts provided. PSHE, science, and literacy all in one!
Teaching Structure:
Explain to your students that insects are getting social and love the new bugbook social media site. It’s their job to observe and research a chosen insect and make a bugbook profile for it. Share the example with them as a starting point to showcase the kind of things they may include. Get students to head outside, choose an insect they’d like to create a profile for and spend some time observing it, filling in as much of the research sheet as possible.
They can then compete the sheet using the internet to research. Once the research sheet is complete they can create the insect’s profile using the templates provided.
**Internet Safety: **Once they’ve completed their profiles, you can use the 10 internet safety question prompts to have a discussion with your class about the importance of being safe online. This could be done in small groups where each station is a different point outdoors.
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This Science (Keeping Healthy) QR code activity is perfect for introducing the topic of ‘Keeping Healthy’ or as a friendly reminder about how to live a healthy lifestyle. You will be amazed at how much they can learn about keeping healthy in a short amount of time!
This activity works best in the outdoors. Hide the QR codes around your outdoor area and then give the children the answer sheet and the I-pads. They must go around, find the answers, and complete the answer sheet.
If you are using the QR codes, you will need a QR scanner, which you can download free from the app store.
Alternatively you can print the cards two sided (with the answers on the back) if you do not have the technology available.
I find it works really well if you get the children to do the QR quiz, and then a week later give them the same questions to see what they have remembered.
Contents:
- 16 QR Quiz Cards
- 16 Cards with answers that you can print on the back of the question cards
- 1 answer sheet
We hope you have as much fun as our class did!
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This QR code quiz is perfect for introducing the topic of ‘States of Matter’ or as a refresher lesson for years 3 - 6. It covers a variety of questions on solids, liquids, and gases. You will be amazed at how much they can learn about states of matter in a short amount of time!
This activity works best in the outdoors. Hide the QR codes around your outdoor area and then give the children the answer sheet and the I-pads. They must go around, find the answers, and complete the answer sheet.
If you are using the QR codes, you will need a QR scanner, which you can download free from the app store.
Alternatively you can print the cards two sided (with the answers on the back) if you do not have the technology available.
I find it works really well if you get the children to do the QR quiz, and then a week later give them the same questions to see what they have remembered.
Contents:
- 16 QR Quiz Cards
- 16 Cards with answers that you can print on the back of the question cards
- 1 answer sheet
We hope you have as much fun as our class did!
Building a bug hotel is great fun for all ages groups, however this pack will encourage students to look more carefully at the different insects their hotel is attracting and the habitats they thrive in.
For this project they’ll design a hotel and observe the changes over time.
It is a great cross-curricular project if you are looking at data handling, habitats, living things, and even engineering.
This pack contains two levels of differentiation.
Contents:
Teacher Guide
Instructions
Design Sheets
Results Table (before)
Bar Graph (before)
Results Table (after / during)
Bar Graph (after)
Conclusion Questions
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