Create a puddle on a sunny outdoor surface by gently spilling water on it.
Draw around the perimeter (outside) of the puddle using chalk.
Start the timer and watch!
Stop the timer after 5 minutes. How much of your puddle is left?
What are we learning
Evaporation is a process that occurs when a liquid changes into a gas. On a warm, sunny day, air molecules move quickly with energy from sunlight, and water molecules in the puddle are warmed by the sun’s heat. When energetic air molecules collide with water molecules on the puddle’s surface, some water molecules receive enough energy to break free from the puddle, becoming water vapour. This reduces the amount of water in the puddle, so it shrinks. You will notice that a puddle with the smallest surface area takes the longest to evaporate. This is because there is less surface area exposed to the air.
Investigate
Create two puddles, one smaller and one bigger, and time them. Which puddle evaporated the fastest, the one with the bigger or smaller perimeter?
Simply grab a paint chart and see how many colours you an match up with natural objects!
Are there any colours that you struggle to find in the natural environment? Why do you think this is?
What are we learning
This activity encourages children to really look at the natural environment around them and the colours within it. It introduces them to the important role that botanists and naturalists play in studying the plants and flowers around us. You could use it as an opportunity to talk about scientific concepts such as how the process of photosynthesis affects the colours of leaves.
Investigate
Repeat this activity in a different season. How has the range of colours that you have found changed? Why do you think this is?
Take a daffodil and carefully begin the dissection. Start with the outer parts of the daffodil: sepal, petals etc.
Use a pair of scissors to cut the corona. You may also want to use tweezers to assist with the dissection.
Continue to dissect the remaining parts of the daffodil, laying them out on a flat surface.
Use a magnifying glass to take a closer look at each part of the daffodil.
What are we learning
A flower dissection is a great way to get children to really engage with the parts of a flower. Flowers like daffodils and lilies work particularly well for this activity. Children will enjoy discovering and labelling all the different parts of the flower and researching their purposes.
Investigate
Go on a nature walk and look at other types of flowers. What flower parts do they have in common? What are the differences?
Turn a shoebox into a drain by cutting slits in the lid.
Add blue fabric or paper for ‘water’.
Drop in items to rescue (keys, credit card, coins, receipt etc).
Time to get rescuing! You could use paperclips, magnets or chopsticks. Or try out other ways to rescue each item.
What are we learning
This activity helps to develop soft skills such as creative thinking, communication and problem solving. Encourage children to think for themselves about how they will use the equipment to rescue each item. There is likely to be an element of trial and error. Discuss with your child the benefit of making these mistakes. They are an important part of the learning process and help us to improve!
Add a drop of food colouring to the water to create a colour contrast. Mix well.
Drop in the ice cubes.
Position your ‘fishing rod’ (string) across the ice.
Sprinkle salt on the areas where the string and ice meet. Then leave for one minute.
Lift up the string to see how much ice your fishing rod has caught!
What are we learning
Salt lowers the freezing point of water, helping to dissolve it faster. As it melts, the string sinks into the ice cube. The water dilutes the salt/water mixture, causing the ice on the top to refreeze, trapping the string.
Investigate
Find out about how salt is used on icy roads to keep them safe in the winter.
Add two teaspoons of water and mix until the water changes colour.
Use a syringe to collect up the mixture. Then add it into three different tray wells.
Add a teaspoon full of vinegar to the first tray well and mix. This is your acid indicator.
Add a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda mixed with water to the second tray well and mix. This is your base indicator.
Compare the colours in each tray well. What is different about them? Why do you think this is?
What are we learning
A rose is an example of an acid-base indicator. Other flowers that you could use include tulips and pansies. When we add an acid it turns the petal mixture an orange or pink colour. When we add the base it turns the petal mixture a blue or purple colour.
Investigate
Now try this with a range of other flowers. Which ones are acid-base indicators? You could also try this activity with fruit and vegetables.
Welcome to the Spring 2023 edition of our seasonal STEM guides! It contains:
STEM related Spring events and themed days/weeks
Quick, easy website and activity suggestions for how to get involved (click on the pictures to find out more)
Spring STEM resource recommendations
Diaries at the ready! The events listed below are a really good way to help theme your STEM activities and help children to make real-world links. Spring is full of new life; from tree buds and colourful bulbs emerging from the ground to lambs, frogspawn and early butterflies. Spring is a hopeful time when we can spend longer outside and enjoy all the season has to offer. Make the most of it with these STEM events.
International Women’s Day (8th March)
International Women’s Day is an annual event. It’s all about celebrating women’s achievements, raising awareness against bias and taking action for equality. t is a way to show how women have and continue to influence the world. As well as celebrating brilliant women, it’s also used as a day to highlight and raise awareness about issues that women still face. Whether deliberate or unconscious, bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead. Knowing that bias exists isn’t enough, action is needed to level the playing field.
British Science Week is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths that takes place between 10-19th March. British Science Week provides a platform to stimulate and support teachers, STEM professionals, science communicators and the general public to produce and participate in STEM events and activities.
The theme for the 2023 activity packs is ‘Connections’.
World Water Day is a UN observance day, with the aim to highlight the importance of freshwater. It celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water. It is all about taking action to tackle the global water crisis.
The UN uses this day to highlight the importance of water usage and the effects it can have on climate change. The campaign shows how our use of water can help reduce floods, droughts, scarcity and pollution, and how it can help fight climate change itself.
The mission of National Robotics Week (RoboWeek) is simple: to inspire students into robotics and STEM related fields, and share the excitement of robotics across all ages. It showcases the strength of the industry and the amazing things yet to come. Activities can come in all shapes and sizes from a robot themed party to a robotics competition.
The Earth Day 2023 Theme is Invest In Our Planet. This is the moment to change it all — the business climate, the political climate, and how we take action on climate. Now is the time for the unstoppable courage to preserve and protect our health, our families, our livelihoods… together, we must Invest In Our Planet.
International Astronomy Day is a worldwide event which is observed annually on the 7th May. It’s intended to promote greater education and understanding of the universe, as well as the ways in which we can observe it. Star-gazing, visits to planetariums and astronomy workshops are common activities.
Here are a few of our ‘must have’ Spring STEM resources. We think you’ll come back to them year after year with your children! Click on each picture to view it on Amazon.
Have we missed off a winter STEM event or a ‘must have’ winter STEM resource? If so then add it to the comments below. (note: this is a UK based website so some events have a UK focus).
Every young person should see similar people to themselves succeeding in STEM.
“You can’t be what you can’t see”
Marian Wright Edelman (American activist for children’s rights)
However…
Women are underrepresented in STEM fields, making up just 24% of the overall UK STEM workforce
Black, minority ethnic and disadvantaged young people are also consistently underrepresented within STEM.
Disabled and neurodivergent people experience barriers to success in STEM.
A powerful way to address this and challenge stereotypes is by exposing students to a diverse range of STEM role models from a young age. Picture books are a fantastic starting point.
Here are some of our favourite Diversity in STEM books. Click on the image to find the book on Amazon.
Take the time to review the STEM literature in your bookshelves and make sure it’s sending the message to our young people that STEM is for everyone.
The idea for HowToSTEM was first planted in my mind back in 2018 when I decided to organise a STEM week at my primary school. Full of enthusiasm, I turned to the internet for inspiration, only to find… well, not a lot!
I wanted to share with my colleagues a selection of activities that were:
Quick
Easy-to-resource
Low budget
Suitable for both KS1 and KS2
Clearly explained the learning
Everything I found seemed to be entirely the opposite of that. With so much out there for the well-trodden maths or science weeks, surely someone must have organised a STEM week in their school?
With the dawning realisation that I was going to have to look beyond Google for inspiration I put my thinking cap on and created an overview of how I wanted our STEM week to look. One of the most important outcomes I wanted to achieve was for the students to see how the disciples of science, technology, engineering and maths combine together in the real-world to create exciting job opportunities. I also wanted them to see the diversity of those roles. These subjects open so many more doors than simply being a scientist or a mathematician. Video games designer, zoologist, pilot… the list goes on and on! Perhaps if we could inspire them with the breadth of opportunity we could help to keep them engaged for longer?
Choose a Theme
STEM covers such a broad range of areas that its impossible to do them all justice in a week. Picking a theme helps to focus the activities and allow you go to into greater depth. With a bit of forward planning you may even be able to coincide this theme with an annual event such as ‘World Space Week’ or ‘National Robotics Week’.
Here are just a few examples that I’ve used in the past:
If a whole school theme approach isn’t for you then an alternative is to allocate separate year group STEM themes. This allows you to represent a wide range of STEM areas, all in one week. You can choose whether to link each theme to what the children have been learning or go completely off curriculum.
From here you can then decide on the STEM activities you will do. There’s plenty of inspiration across ’15-Minute STEM’ Books 1 & 2 and each activity ticks the boxes of being quick, easy-to-resource, suitable for KS1/2 and clearly explaining the learning.
Have an End Goal
Consider the following:
How much of the weekly timetable will be set aside for STEM? The whole week? Every afternoon?
Will each year group be working on one big project or a series of smaller projects?
How will you share the learning with the school community?
How will you display the learning around the school?
Your STEM week will create quite a buzz throughout the school community. Make sure you plan in opportunities to celebrate the learning. This could be through an assembly at the end of the week. Or you could organise a STEM week exhibition where STEM activities are laid out for parents/carers and other classes to peruse. I recently heard of a school who held a ‘Dragons’ Den’ style event at the end of their STEM week. Each year group had been challenged to create a product linked to their whole school STEM theme and concluded the week by pitching it to the ‘dragons’ (a selection of governors!)
You’ll find you have plenty of wonderful creations to decorate the school with. Liaise with colleagues in advance to make sure they keep a sample of the work for display. Think about the area/notice boards you will use for the display and whether you will need a size restriction. STEM creations that are too large for display and may need to be photographed instead..
Arrange workshops and visitors
Wherever you are based there are likely to be many people in your local community willing to work with your school during the week. When organising visiting speakers and workshops, consider reaching our to places such as relevant university departments, nearby zoos, local museums, and, of course, STEM ambassadors. If you’re not already aware of the STEM ambassadors scheme, they have over 30,000 ambassadors who volunteer their time and expertise to promote STEM to young people. Contact your nearest STEM ambassador hub to arrange a visit. My top tip would be to do so a few months in advance of your STEM week, detailing exactly the areas you will be focusing on. They can then include your school in their monthly email to ambassadors and will help to pair you up with the most relevant people to your topic. Aim to organise a visiting speaker or workshop per year group, as well as a STEM assembly or two. Our STEM week was launched with a fantastic assembly from the local university’s chemistry department, complete with explosions!
You can find lots of examples of STEM careers on our website. Check out the profiles and use these to help narrow down the kinds of careers that you would like to share with the children throughout the week.
Sailor
Sound Engineer
Physicist
Robotics Engineer
It’s easy to think you need to spend lots of money booking workshops and visitors. I’ll let you in on a secret: the only cost incurred for our STEM week was the project resources (card, dowel etc, most of which were acquired cheaply from places like Scrapstore). Every single visitor and workshop was completely free! Granted, the school was well-located in a large city but with a bit of effort and a few emails, I hope you could achieve something similar almost anywhere in the country.
Make use of parents/carers
One of your most valuable resources is standing right outside your classroom door! You’d be amazed how many of the parents and carers within your school community have STEM experience. Spread the word about your week and you will most likely find volunteers willing to lead workshops or Q&A sessions linked to their career. During our STEM week we had all sorts of wonderful visitors including pilots, boat builders, wind farm engineers and firemen. Their knowledge and expertise brought a depth to the week that we as teachers would struggle to attain and made our lives much easier in the process!
Make sure that your introduce the children to a diverse representation of STEM people. This is a fantastic way to challenge STEM stereotypes that can become embedded from an early age. For example, inviting in female role models helps to challenge the misconception that STEM subjects are ‘male’.
Welcome to the Winter 2023/24 edition of our seasonal STEM guides! It contains:
STEM related winter events and themed days/weeks
Quick, easy website and activity suggestions for how to get involved (click on the pictures to find out more)
Wintery STEM resource recommendations
Diaries at the ready! The events listed below are a really good way to help theme your STEM activities and help children to make real-world links. From frosty starts to roaring fires, from festive feels to valentines joy, Winter is a time to get cosy and enjoy all the season has to offer. Make the most of it with these STEM events.
Computer Science Week (6-12th December 23)
Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) is an annual call to action to inspire children to learn computer science, advocate for equity in computer science education, and celebrate the contributions of students, teachers, and partners to the field. This week is held in recognition of the birthday of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (9th Dec 1906) who coined the term “bug” (an error in a program) after removing an actual moth from a computer in 1947!
There are lots of Christmas activities that make great STEM links. Make the most of the darker, cosier evenings by curling up with a wintery STEM book. See below for our ‘seasonal STEM books’ recommendations. Plus, keep your eyes peeled for our STEM advent calendar! Behind each door is a quick, easy STEM activity that you can do with children.
Keep your eyes peeled for the STEM advent calendar!
RSPB’s Big School’s Birdwatch (8th Jan- 19th Feb 2024)
RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch (26-28th Jan 2024)
Big Garden Birdwatch: Be wowed by your local wildlife. Simply count the birds you see in your garden, from your balcony or in your local park for one hour between 26-28th January 2024.
Big School’s Birdwatch: If you’re a teacher, why not take part in the RSPB’s Big School’s Birdwatch. You can submit your results on the RSPB website from the 8th Jan-19th Feb.
RSPB’s Big Schools’ Birdwatch is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and the reason it’s been going for so long is because it’s such valuable work. The results that schools submit to the RSPB are used by scientists to help create a picture of how birds are faring across the UK.
Join schools across the UK on Friday 2nd February 2024 for the NSPCC’s mega maths fundraising day.
Take part in Dress up for Digits and have a fun-filled day of maths activities and games, while raising money to support our services such as Childline.
The money you raise could help the NSPCC run its Speak out Stay safe programme to help children understand what abuse is and what to do if they’re scared or worried.
Safer Internet Day 2024 will be celebrated on the 6th February with the theme ‘inspiring change’.
From gaming and chat, to streaming and video, young people are shaping the interactive entertainment spaces they are a part of. Safer Internet Day 2024 celebrates young people’s role in creating a safer internet, whether that is whilst gaming and creating content, or interacting with their friends and peers.
Founded by NSPE in 1951, Engineers Week (18-24th February 2024) is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers.
Engineers Week celebrates the positive contributions that engineers have made to the quality of life. It’s also an opportunity to increase diversity within the workplace, reinforce good education, and increase interest and understanding of the trade.
Celebrating Engineers Week enables young people to be inspired and motivated to get involved in engineering, especially if teachers and parents contribute. Dedicating lesson time to engineering will help children to understand the basics, so they can decide if they want to pursue it as a career.
Here are a few of our ‘must have’ Winter STEM resources. We think you’ll come back to them year after year with your children! Click on each picture to view it on Amazon.
Have we missed off a winter STEM event or a ‘must have’ winter STEM resource? If so then add it to the comments below. (note: this is a UK based website so some events have a UK focus).
