Learning at home with Explorify

Whether it's a school homework activity, expanding on a general interest, or part of a homeschool curriculum, both Science Sparks and Explorify are bursting with resources to spark curiosity and inspire a love of science and learning.

Explorify is full of engaging videos, thought provoking questions, and hands-on activities to make learning at home as easy as possible. The powerful search facility allows you to search by age, topic, and type of resource, saving hours of internet searching. I especially like the Who Is? activities, which highlight the work and life of a diverse range of scientists.

The autumn term are great times for children to learn outdoors. These five activities are simple, engaging and low-cost ways to bring science to life at home or in school.

Outdoor Learning Ideas

Baking Soda Rockets

Baking soda rockets are a fantastic introduction or finale to a space or forces topic. They generally work well and use inexpensive, mostly recyclable materials. Children can work alone or in teams to design the rocket, thinking about keeping it as light as possible and streamlining the shape. As an extension task, children can experiment with different vinegar and baking soda ratios to find the best 'rocket fuel' for their creation.

Resources that could support the building of baking soda rockets include discussing the video in ‘To the Moon and beyond’ or which image is the Odd One Out in ‘What goes up must come down’.  

Seed Dispersal

Learning about seed dispersal in autumn is a great way to encourage children outside. Once the leaves and seeds start to fall, a seed treasure hunt is a fun way to learn which seeds belong to which tree. Looking at the images in ‘Winter seeds’  can help children understand what to look for when outside. They can look at the properties of the different seeds they find to work out how they are spread.

Continue this topic by learning about the work of Bethan Stagg.

Predicting the weather with pine cones

A pinecone is a cone or round structure produced by pine trees that contains the tree's seeds. The cone is full of plates called scales that keep the seeds safe. The structure of a pinecone can be looked at closely in the images in ‘Brown scales’.

Pinecones open when the seeds are mature, and the weather is dry. They close up again when the weather is wet. This feature means pinecones can be used as a fun way to predict whether it will rain or not.

Watching and recording pinecones is a great way to make observations over time.

Measure rainfall with a DIY rain gauge

Another great activity for encouraging children outdoors is making a rain gauge and measuring rainfall over a period of time. A simple and inexpensive rain gauge can be made using an empty 2 litre plastic bottle. The rain gauge should be emptied at the end of each day and the amount of rain recorded.

Extend this activity by finding out what clouds are made of.

Bird feeders

Cold weather brings several challenges to birds and wildlife. There is less readily available food, and ice and frost can make berries and nuts harder and more difficult to eat.

Making a bird feeder is a simple science craft and a great way to help wildlife in winter.

A simple bird feeder can be made by rolling pinecones in lard and seeds and hanging them in trees. Bird feeders highlights considerations about feeding birds and other methods to make bird feeders.

Extend this activity with a video showing how baby birds are fed.

Image credit:

PeopleImages from Getty Images