Produced by the Field Studies Council, Where We Live is a practical guide for anyone who wants to educate and empower people to improve the environment of their community.

It provides a structure that allows people actively to investigate and examine the environmental issues in their own community and initiate practical local improvements.

It is about nurturing the values, understanding and skills needed to create a group of responsible, knowledgeable and active citizens who have the capacity to bring about change in the community.

The activities in Where We Live can be used with groups of different ages and abilities.

http://www.field-studies-council.org/resources/wherewelive/index.aspx

The collapse of honeybee colonies has been widely reported, but in fact most of the UK’s 250 bee species appear to be in decline.

This loss of bees has serious consequences for crop pollination, so Bee Part Of It will be helping all of our bees by creating 40,000 new bee-friendly wildflower rich spaces.

From 17 May, with help from the National Trust, local BBC radio stations are adopting a local bee hive in their area and following the plight of a new colony of our favourite pollen collectors over their busiest months

This would be a great idea for a class or school project. You could make a bumblebee home, or grow a bumblebee friendly garden area.

The BBC website has some other interesting ideas for things your pupils can do to help wildlife in your school environment : http://www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/things_to_do/

Get ready for Great Plant Hunt Week 17 – 22 May 2010! This is a great way of getting your students participating in real scientific research. Take part in this special thinking walk activity between the 17th and 22nd May, looking for 10 easy to spot plants and simply take a photo of the ones that you find in flower!

With schools across the UK uploading these photos to a map on the website, you can look at how the flowering in this small snapshot of time may differ geographically – maybe look to see if the dandelions are flowering in your neighbouring school? You can also compare this year’s data to last, click here to see the results from the same week last year, do you think there might be different results this year?

Visit the Great Plant Hunt Week website to find out more: http://www.greatplanthunt.org/gphweek

New Resources for Foundation Stage

The Great Plant Hunt website has added to its range of primary school activities and has released a set of new activities for 3-5 year olds.

Now freely available for download from the website, along with supporting materials, these three activities will get your foundation classes out exploring the natural world, getting creative and preparing for a colour themed party! As always the activities enjoy close links to the curriculum in areas such as observation, colour, counting, sorting and creative development.

Find out more about these brand new resources and get your class plant hunting – you’re never too young to learn from the great outdoors!

Resources for all other key stages, and also teachers guides, can be found on the main site: http://www.greatplanthunt.org

Get ready for Great Plant Hunt Week 17 – 22 May 2010 The Great Plant Hunt Week Phenology Activity is a great way of getting your students participating in real scientific research. Take part in this special thinking walk activity between the 17th and 22nd May, looking for 10 easy to spot plants and simply take a photo of the ones that you find in flower! With schools across the UK uploading these photos to a map on the website, you can look at how the flowering in this small snapshot of time may differ geographically – are the dandelions flowering in your neighbouring school?

How about on the other side of the UK? You can also compare this year’s data to last, click here to see the results from the same week last year, do you think there might be different results this year?

To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, commissioned and funded by the Wellcome Trust, has created The Great Plant Hunt. This project will encourage Primary school children to explore the natural world around them and join other schools in the biggest ever school science project.

The Great Plant Hunt invites primary school children to follow in the footsteps of Darwin by going on nature walks in and around their school grounds. They’ll find out more about plants and in the process learn key scientific skills. There is a lot more information, and links to resources in the Teacher Area of the site.

In addition to the activity ideas, there are also interactive resources to use on an IWB such as Plant or Not?, Herby Havoc and Sunflower Survival.

All teaching materials and resources are available to download – so you can make your own Treasure Chest of resources to run The Great Plant Hunt completely free.

If you want advice and ideas for using Plants in the classroom, then the SAPS website is well worth bookmarking. (Science and Plants in Schools)

You can download a pdf version of their booklet – Living Processes and What Plants Need to Grow from this page. (download each section separately)

Also look out for

Plants for Primary Schools – a series of booklets

Parts of a Plant and their functions

Reproduction and Life Cycles 1

Reproduction and Life Cycles 2

Not very sciency but came up during today’s session. If you haven’t heard Eddie Izzard taking through the invention of the Heimlich maneuver then here you go (Note language not safe for school)

Here are some useful sites to supplement the work we did on Electricity yesterday.

Firstly – the Flash file with questions about circuits came from the Essex e-gfl site. You can see it here.

A battery with one bulb connected is your standard to compare things to. Electricity flows from one end of the battery to the other, flowing through the bulb as it goes, making the bulb light up.

Adding a second bulb in series will increase the total resistance in the circuit. The bulbs will be dimmer than the single bulb.

Adding a second bulb in parallel is a different situation. You have added a second pathway for the electricity to flow, The resistance is greater than a single bulb, but is is not as high as the two bulbs in parallel. The two bulbs will be brighter.

A “cars on the highway” analogy may help explain the distinction: think of a wide highway narrowing to a one-lane bridge to cross a river. Now imagine that in order to get rid of traffic jams, the highway department builds another one-lane bridge over the river. The “resistance” (in this case analogous to the width), of both bridges stays the same, but the amount of “current” or traffic that can cross the river has increased, so the overall “resistance” of the entire system has decreased. Taken from here.

In a series circuit, each bulb you add will make the brightness of the bulbs dimmer and dimmer

In a parallel circuit, the brightness of the bulbs does not change with the addition of more bulbs (but if you added many parallel circuits, eventually all of the bulbs would dim down as you approached the capacity of the battery)

This page from the BBC KS2 Bitesize site is pretty useful.

The GCSE Bitesize page may help explain things to you too.

It’s also worth looking at is this presentation from Skool.co.uk

More Links and Resources

Here are some more links that hopefully will help with teaching circuits

The free circuit builder Crocodile Elementary is now called Yenka Basic Circuits, and you can get it here. This will let you build circuits to your heart’s content!

From BBC Science Clips, try these resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/6_7/electricity.shtml

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/conductors.shtml)

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/changing_circuits.shtml)

Other Links

Make an Electric Circuit Online

BBC Learning Zone – Electricity Videos

The Blobz Guide to Circuits

PhET Circuit Builder

Cleo Circuit World

For a quick 10 minute preview, that explains some aspects of circuits. Go to Furry Elephant, and choose series or parallel circuits. It literally only allows you 10 minutes though.

Link to other Links Pages

E=TC3 6G Changing Circuits Page

E=TC3 4f Circuits and Conductors Page

TopicBox – Electricity

e-gfl Electricity resources

The full video in all its glory

Diet coke and mentos from Danny Nicholson on Vimeo.

The BBC have launched an area of their gardening website aimed at children. There’s some nice ideas for gardening projects both indoors and outdoors. Take a look and see if any could be used with your class.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/gardening_with_children/homegrownprojects_index.shtml