Our Top 3 winning primary science challenges to try this term
Friday 9th November 2018
Calling all Oxon and Bucks primary school teachers with a competitive streak! As we know from our super popular Big Science Event, science competitions are a fantastic way to engage children with STEM. We’ve been on the look out for the very best primary science competitions for your class, so here are our top 3 picks for this term.
1 – Farmvention!
Check out www.farmvention.com for three fun challenges designed to encourage children to come up with creative solutions to the kind of everyday problems faced by farmers. From designing the tractor of the future and keeping hens healthy to creating delicious snacks, the challenges are interesting and accessible by children of all ages. There are categories for KS1, LKS2 and UKS2 and entries can be in any form – a video, a powerpoint presentation, a magazine article, photographs, drawings, animations or whatever else your students come up with.
The closing date is the end of term and there are some fab prizes up for grabs including farm visits, a visit to your school from a chef and robotics, data logging and engineering equipment. Winning teams will all be invited to the grand final at the House of Commons in 2019, with all your travel expenses covered. Every team that enters will receive a competition pack, including a certificate and a mystery prize too!
2 – Science at our school – Photo Competition
If you’d like to try something simpler, the Primary Science Teaching Trust’s photo competition could be perfect for you. All your pupils need to do is a photograph whatever they feel best represents science in your school and add a caption. Visit here for full details and to upload your winning photo before 14th December 2018.
3 – Big Science Event
And then of course there’s our brilliant Big Science Event 2019! We saw over 11,000 pupils from 80 schools across Oxon and Bucks taking part in the competition in 2018, coming up with some fantastic research project ideas such as What makes snails move?’ and ‘How much air does it take to pop a banana?’ Playforce, UK specialists in creating and delivering play spaces and playground equipment, have announced that they are donating two top prizes of £1000 of play equipment from the Ready To Play selection to each of the schools who win our Oxon and Bucks Big Science Event in 2019. The closing date for entries is January 25th 2019 but the sooner you register, the sooner your class can get working on their projects!
Sign up online here.
We love to hear what your students are up to and we always do our best to respond with a message that you can share with your class. If you enter any of the competitions or just have some amazing science to share, do tweet us @scienceoxford, use #scienceox on Instagram or email [email protected] to show off what you’ve all been up to!
