Science - Useful websites and resources

A quick search online will produce endless ideas for suitable early years science activities for children. You can adapt them according to the age of the children involved with younger children there may be safety considerations (e.g., choking hazards) and with older children, there may be opportunities to extend their learning (e.g., by getting them to record their results).

Remember to keep the activities age-appropriate and prioritise safety.

Provide ample opportunities for children to ask questions, make predictions, and explore through hands-on experiences. Science should be a playful and exciting journey of discovery for children.

Introduction to Science in EYFS

For practitioners, it can be difficult to establish how to reflect on the work being done in the early years of the science curriculum of a school. To support this task, the Pan-London Assessment Network's Introduction to Science in EYFS aims to explain how science fits in the early years.

10 Early Years Science Activities EYFS

First Discoverers' 10 Early Years Science Activities EYFS is a unique independent childcare resource for anyone who works in childcare and wishes to further their knowledge, or simply anyone wishing to learn more about children around them. 

Get Creative with fun and exciting craft activities

WWF has a series of Get Creative with fun and exciting craft activities that have been designed to encourage wildlife into your local area and to explore your love of nature.

National Geographic Kids

How do you encourage children to be little scientists, astronauts, or engineers? The National Geographic Kids website is bursting with science facts about the way the world works. From biology, chemistry, physics, and natural history, you can discover some incredible secrets and remarkable theories, and explore some amazing experiments. 

NASA Space Place

Launched in 1998, NASA Space Place's mission is to inspire children’s learning of space and Earth science online through fun games, hands-on activities, informative articles and engaging short videos with resources for parents and teachers.

Play Observe and Ask

Activities, strategies, provision, and examples of children (ages three to five) learning science to support EYFS practitioners. The Primary Science Teaching Trust's Play Observe and Ask webpage offers support and resources for adults who are helping young children (ages three to five) to explore the world around them with a focus on learning science. Activities and strategies are suitable for use by educators in an early years setting and by parents or carers at home. 

Early years science and outdoor play

What better place to explore science in early years, than outdoors where you can really bring learning to life. Early years consultant and qualified forest school leader, Tricia Pillay, explores some of the ways in which you can explore early years science and outdoor play at your nursery.

Dancing Corn Experiment

Children love fizzy baking soda experiments, the Dancing Corn Experiment is a magical preschool activity, that explores simple chemical reactions. You will need a glass, of popping corn, baking soda, vinegar, and water. Your children will love watching the corn dance during the chemical reaction. Use soda to make it more fun, and why not play music with it to add to the enjoyment.

Make bouncy balls

Make bouncy balls is a fun and simple science activity that will entertain your children. In this quick, five-minute experiment, your little scientists can mix up their own homemade bouncy balls.

Glowing oobleck

Glowing oobleck (glow-in-the-dark mud). The mixture you are going to make in this activity is great fun for children. Oobleck is a type of mixture called a non-Newtonian fluid. If you push hard on it, it hardens up and pushes back against you. If you push lightly on the oobleck, though, it stays as a liquid and your hand will easily go into it. So, mould it in your hands and it is like dough stop moulding and it turns to liquid. If you have a fluorescent light it will glow in the dark too.

Make Smores with a solar oven

Harness the energy of the sun to make s’mores in a solar oven. A solar oven is a box that traps some of the sun’s energy to make the air inside the box hotter than the air outside the box. In other words, the solar oven is like a super greenhouse.

Super science experiments

We owe a lot to science, just try and imagine a world without it… No televisions, no computers, not even ice cream. These super science experiments from National Geographic Kids will give young children a good understanding of how science works, and you will have fun too.

Science experiments for preschoolers

This collection of science experiments for preschoolers contains some great science activities to try in your setting.

Nina and the Neurons

Help CBeebies' Nina and the Neurons with their exciting experiments. Play science, building, engineering, and coding games online, listen to CBeebies Radio and sing along with Nina.

What is Science?

On the Active Wild website, they look to answer the questions that children may ask… What is Science? They investigate the ‘scientific method,’ the way in which scientists go about their work, and how they make their amazing discoveries. 

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