This resource, produced by the Earth Science Teachers' Association provides students with an introduction to earth science, starting with learning to distinguish between minerals, rocks and fossils. Many of the activities are suitable for group work, although some may be set as homework. The resource consists of...

This resource is a set of instructions for groups of six students to make a working umbrella mechanism out of simple materials. It is a completely practical activity with no formal maths content but it is very useful for linking the students’ work on deployable structures to a real piece of engineering that they...

Aimed at primary level, this resource links to the topics of plants and living things and their habitats.The activities are designed to build on earlier knowledge and develop ideas and skills within grouping and classification. They start with activities which help...

This resource, from the National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC), explains how children can grow their own sunflowers and how plant oils can be made into plastic. It helps to demonstrate how sunflowers can be grown to produce a renewable supply of plant oil. This activity can be done at home or in school and allows...

As people live longer the demand for new organs to replace failed ones increases. One possible solution is to build new organs in a dish from cells taken from the patient’s own body. Students use evidence from case studies to work out if this is possible and then to decide whether this new technology offers a good...

This Salters’ Science extension module for biology deals with the breeding, cultivation and harvesting of plants as crops. Experiments on soil structure and nutrient content are matched with data about major crops to show why different crops require different conditions...

From the Centre for Science Education, and with support from Shell Education services, these materials help children to grow large crystals using salt solution. The crystals take about a week to grow. This activity gives children the opportunity to consider processes such as: * changing materials and that changes...

This Salters’ Chemistry Course unit from the University of York Science Education Group covered:
* The use of relative atomic masses in determining the masses of reactants and products.
* The manufacture, properties and uses of fertilizers.
* Soil...

One of a series of resources from Science & Plants for Schools (SAPS) investigating key topics in plant biology. An enjoyable and thought-provoking introduction to the topic of sexual reproduction in plants. Students observe in real time the growth of a pollen tube, over the course of a lesson. When a pollen...

This activity encourages children to consider how bones grow as we grow. Working in groups, children measure the height, distance around the skull, length of a foot and length of a lower arm for each person in order to investigate whether taller people have longer bones...

This Concept Cartoon on food was produced by Millgate House Education and Practical Action. This cartoon help students explore environmental issues around growing and importing food.

Concept Cartoons are quick, simple and effective. They are designed to intrigue, provoke discussion and stimulate thinking....

This resource is an interactive excel program to enable students to investigate exponential growth and decay. The topics of the interactive sheets are depreciation, exponential growth of bacteria and half life and radioactive decay.

This animation shows the processes of growth in plants at the cellular level. It demonstrates how growth occurs at specific regions within the plant, how cells divide by mitosis, and how cells become specialised into different tissues...

Two people are playing a guessing game. One of them thinks of a five letter word, and each time the other makes a guess they tell them the number of letters that they got correct. Can you figure out the correct word with just three guesses?

There are two further examples to try.

In this resource students are challenged to answer a mystery about colour.   They investigate the additive and subtractive synthesis of coloured pigments and explore what coloured objects look like under different coloured lights.