Last week’s Science blog looked at how we can use the spiral curriculum in Science to engage our children of different ages simultaneously. Not magic, just good old fashioned Science and planning ahead.

As we discussed last week, it’s difficult having work, home and school all under one roof. 

We know time is of the essence so without further ado, here’s our round-up of the Science topics that match this week’s HLH timetable from Beyond.

The Spiral Curriculum in Science

To get you up to speed, in Science, the same topics are revisited as students progress through the different key stages, so we’ve taken the liberty to look at this week’s HLH Science resources and pair them up with the same topic areas in the different key stages so that your dining room table can be a hive of activity for your young and not so young (basically adults according to them) scientists.

Biology: Reproduction 

Reproduction of plants and animals is our first area of interest this week. Serendipitously, the KS2 and KS3 plant activities match up very well indeed. A nice extension to do with these activities would be to get your children to go outside and identify parts of different flowers using the worksheets to help them. 

KS1:

• Animals and Their Babies Pairing Game

KS2:

• Pollination Presentation

KS3:

• Plant Reproduction Worksheet
• Human Reproduction

KS4:

• Inheritance, Variation and Evolution Glossary Activity

Chemistry: Separating Mixtures

OK, this is a great one for if you don’t have a laboratory in your house but do have a kitchen! Sieves, colanders and coffee filters, there are plenty of examples of scientific separation outside a lab!

KS1:

• Colour in Leaves
• Chromatography Activity Pack

KS2:

• Separating Mixtures Presentation
• Separating Mixtures Worksheet

KS3:

• States of Matter Exam Questions
• Separating Mixtures Activity

KS4:

• Atomic Structure and the Periodic Table Knowledge Organiser
• Chemical Analysis Foundation Revision Activity Mat
• Chemical Analysis Higher Revision Activity Mat

Physics: Electricity and Magnetism

Electricity and magnetism is a topic that features prominently in every key stage. Your children will hopefully be attracted to these home learning activities, not repelled!

We assume that most people don’t have the classic bar magnets at home with the North and South poles:

Flat fridge magnets do not have the North and South poles, they’re different due to the way they’re manufactured. A fridge magnet is a Halbach array*, which is a special arrangement of magnet. They can still be used to check if other things are magnetic or not for some of these experiments.

The kind of magnets you get on toy trains will display attraction and repulsion because these types of magnets are polarised.

*Any keen learners could do some research into this when they’ve finished their other tasks!

KS1:

• Magnetism Challenge Cards
• Magnetism Word Search

KS2:

• Magnetic Objects Worksheet
• Magnets and Materials Presentation

KS3:

• Electricity and Magnetism Revision Mat
• Electricity and Magnetism Knowledge Organiser

KS4:

• Electricity and Magnetism Word Mat
• Magnetism and Electromagnetism Knowledge Organiser

The Spiral Curriculum in Science with Beyond

We hope you find this week’s activities useful and it keeps all of your children engaged. Check-in next week for more spiral curriculum in science suggestions. Get in touch to let us know if it’s working.

Looking for last week’s spiral curriculum in Science blog? Don’t forget to read even more of our blogs here! You can also subscribe to Beyond for access to thousands of secondary teaching resources. You can sign up for a free account here and take a look around at our free resources before you subscribe too.