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.
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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Bird hunts are great fun and easy to do. Print out the sheet for your students to take into your outdoor space and mark off the birds as they find them.
It’s great if you can provide binoculars so they can spot the birds from a distance.
This resource contains sheets for both American and European birds.
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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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Plant scavenger hunts are great fun and easy to do. It can be a great brain break or part of your living things topic.
Print out the sheet for your students to take into your outdoor space and mark off the plants as they find them. It’s great if you can provide some magnifying glasses so they can look at all the amazing details of each flower.
Check out our minibeasts scavenger hunt.
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Minibeast hunts are great fun and easy to do. Print out the sheet for your students to take into your outdoor space and mark off the minibeasts as they find them.
It’s great if you can provide a magnifying glass so they can look at all the amazing details of each minibeast.
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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.
Also be sure to visit my store and FOLLOW ME to see my new products and hear about upcoming sales!
This is a fun and simple activity to introduce students to the world of sound, getting them to observe the world around them, thinking about the different sounds they can hear and where they’re coming from.
Tell the students that they are going to go outside and see how many different things they can hear. Walk around your outdoor space, getting them to draw / write what they can hear on the sheet. Once they have finished, the older ones can complete the question sheet.
For younger students you can simply ask these questions throughout the activity to stimulate thought.
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This types of habitats student research booklet is a great project for students to carry out research on all different habitats around the world, creating a page for each where they’ll research each habitat and record their findings as well as drawing a picture in their booklet. It’s perfect as a personal project or extension activity if you’re looking at continents
This pack comes with a blank template if they which do cover a habitat not included.
To create the booklet, cut each A4 page in half, hole punch the top corner, and use some string or treasury tags to hold them together.
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This animal observation record is designed to be used either outdoors or when looking at live webcams. Students will look closely at both the physical and behavioral characteristics of the animas over a period of 3 or 5 days and record what they see on the observation sheets.
It fits in really we if you’re looking at adaptations or camouflage and mimicry.
This is also a great science investigation or fun home earning project for students.
This resource contains three different levels of challenge.
If doing this activity outside it’s important to choose an animal that’ll still be there when they return for the other observations.
Good animals to observe outside:
Birds with a nest
Spiders in webs
Ant Nests
Animals in ponds
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15 visual healthy eating / lifestyle vocabulary cards that are perfect for your topic word wall complete with a title. They’re a great way to help your children learn the key terms needed for this relevant and engaging topic. We have found them especially helpful for children with English as an additional language or spelling difficulties. Each card contains the key word, definition, and visual aid.
Contents
15 X Key Vocabulary Cards
Display Title
Healthy Eating Vocabulary Included
Balanced Diet
Calories
Carbohydrates
Diet
Exercise
Fat
Fruit
Keeping Healthy
Minerals
Nutrition
Protein
Pulse
Saturated Fat
Vegetables
Vitamins
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This fun STEM team building activity will get your glass thinking about forces as they build the strongest platform they can off the ground using only sticks and string. Once students have planned, built, tested, and evaluated their platforms they can have a fun competition to see which platform hold the heaviest weight.
This activity is great if you are looking at forces in motion, engineering, or simply as a fun team building activity. It is easy to set up as you only need access to our resources, string, and sticks.
Teaching Structure:
Planning sheet
– Students will discuss ideas and complete the planning sheet.
Build the platform
– Give students 20
– 30 minutes to build their platform.
Test the platform
– Give students 5 minutes to test their platform.
Evaluation sheet
– Students will fill in the evaluation sheet, thinking about what went well and what they could do to improve their designs. Give each team 5 minutes to improve their designs.
Competition! See which tower can hold the most weight. You could use stones, weights, or anything else you can find.
Resources needed:
Resource pack
Sticks (any size)
String
Scissors It is useful to go through some basic knots with your class before doing this activity.
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This is a great STEM team building activity that’ll get your class working together as they create their own giant marble runs following the criteria given on the task cards. This activity works best outside in groups of 4 or 5. Each group will need a set of different sized drain pipes to create their marble run. Your caretaker will often be very good at getting hold of these! If not, a letter out to parents will often bring in way more than you need.
To make the marble run you class can use a combination of propping the pipes up on things and supporting them themselves. The less things you have to prop the pipes up, the bigger the group sizes need to be. This activity work really well at the start of the year or just as a fun brain break.
**Resources needed:
**
Task Cards
Cut up drain pipes
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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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For this activity students with think about the properties of different materials as they figure out whether they float or sink, cutting and sticking the pictures into the correct columns.
It’s a great lesson or topic starter for your floating and sinking topic.
This pack contains two levels of differentiation.
Diff. 1: The activity contains two columns - float and sink.
Diff. 2: The activity contains three columns - float, sink, and both. Students are encouraged to think about items which can both float and sink depending on the situation.
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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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This STEM activity gets your students looking at the properties of materials as they are challenged to test their survival skills by getting the dirt out of water using only natural materials and a drinks bottle (they need to design and make their own natural filters!).
To set up the challenge: - Put students into teams of 2 or 3. - Give them the instructions to read. - Give each group a good-sized plastic bottle with four small holes in the bottom (a hot metal skewer is great for this). - Tell them to go into your outdoor space and make their filters. - Test the filters by pouring muddy water in and seeing how much cleaner the water that comes out is. As well as leaves, sticks, stones etc. in your outdoor space, for this activity it is good for them to have access to both sand and gravel.
Once they have completed the activity they can fill in the evaluation sheet which encourages them to think scientifically about what they have done. Extension: You can then move onto looking at real filters and seeing how they work with different liquids – will it separate salt from water?
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The Egg Drop STEM Challenge is a nice variation on the commonly used egg parachute challenge. Your class will work together in small teams, thinking about the best way to protect an egg from being dropped using natural materials. They will be encouraged to think about the properties of different materials, considering which one will work best.
The whole activity is based around a story of an explorer who is trapped in the North Pole and needs food supplies, and of course, his favourite food is egg!
Read the instructions to your class before putting them into groups of 2 or 3. Encourage them to hunt out different natural materials that they think will protect them egg from breaking. Once they have padded out the tubs, give them the egg and see if it works by dropping it from a good height!
To save on money and waste, if an egg does not break, it can be re-used by the following team.
Once the challenge is complete each student can fill in an evaluation sheet.
Resources needed:
Supply of natural materials in an outdoor space
Activity sheets
Small tubs (big 500ml or similar)
Somewhere high to drop the eggs from (first floor or second floor)
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In this activity your class will go on a hunt to find and classify living things by simple criteria, for example, an animal with wings. They will record their observations by drawing the living thing on their record sheet. This is a great activity if you’re looking at animals and plants, or just as a fun way to get your little ones outside observing nature.
This pack contains two levels of differentiation:
Diff. 1: Students draw what they have found with simple criteria.
Diff. 2: Students draw and write what they have found with slightly more complicated criteria.
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A set of entertaining NO PREP electric symbol Tarsia puzzles for your students to practice recognising symbols for your electricity topic. Each differentiated puzzle has a complete set and a muddled puzzle set. I have used these to great success over the last few months. These puzzles are a great extension or main activity to help revise this topic in a fun and engaging way.
Contents:
3 x Complete Tarsia Puzzles
3 x Mixed Tarsia Puzzles
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For this activity students will look at what makes something living or not. They will complete the table by going outside and drawing living things in the left column and non-living things in the right column.
This pack has three differentiated levels.
Diff. 1 – Drawing items in the table
**Diff. 2 **– Drawing items in the table with an extension activity where they must circle the living things.
Diff. 3 – Drawing items in the table with the extension question ‘What makes something living?’.
This activity works well both individually or in pairs.
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