The Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Horticultural Society set up Wild About Gardens to celebrate wildlife gardening and to encourage people to use their gardens to take action to help support nature. Many of our common garden visitors – including hedgehogs, house sparrows and starlings – are increasingly under threat. But together we can make a difference.
This year Wild About Gardens are going wild about swifts, swallows and martins! To find out more visit the Wild About Gardens website where you can download a pack and start learning about these amazing birds.
You also find lots of other packs full of information and activities on bats, worms, hedgehogs and more, here is a fantastic pack about beetles!
Today, 300 million people still live in forests and over one billion people depend on them for their livelihood. Forests cover almost one third of our planet’s land area and well over half of the species found on land live in forests.
This resource from the WWF includes information about forests and jungles, the animals that live there and the threats they face.
Tiger Tales is an English and literacy resource that includes engaging activities to encourage pupils, aged 7 to 11, to find out more about this iconic animal and the threats it faces.
Through the Land for Life project, WWF are collaborating with communities in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania to keep landscapes healthy and develop solutions for people and wildlife to coexist and thrive in a changing world.
Download a teacher guide and accompanying lesson presentation for pupils aged 8-14. The resources give students the opportunity to explore the geography and ecosystems of Kenya and Tanzania and discover the interdependence of natural systems and recognise the consequences that occur when connections are altered or damaged by humans.
Smart Infrastructure provides an interactive learning centre with information on topics surrounding climate change, and engaging games to apply and embed these learnings. The games touch on new technologies and infrastructures and explain how they can be used to respond to the needs of people and the environment.
Siemens Energy Island is a cross-curricular interactive game designed for secondary school students to develop knowledge across Maths, Science and Technology. Students are required to select an energy plan for the energy island from several technologies. As well as making decisions about how to provide energy students need to consider the pollution, reliability and storage of their solution.
You can use the interactive game alongside these accompanying resources to support structured learning aimed at CfE levels 3 and 4 (Key stage 3 and 4).
Siemens Energy Farm is designed to complement the secondary science curriculum. Energy Farm introduces students to the opportunities and challenges presented by different energy technologies. Students are required to implement an energy system that meets the demand whilst minimising the cost and environmental impact.
You can use the interactive game alongside these accompanying resources to support structured learning aimed at CfE level 3 (Key stage 3).
To celebrate the launch of Dynamic Earth’s new permanent gallery – Discover the Deep – why not explore a range of online activities and experiences and take a deep dive into marine science!
From Scotland’s own cold water coral reefs to the depths of the ocean further from home – there’s something for everyone to enjoy in these online activities. To find out more about Discover the Deep, click here.
In our Solar System, Planet Earth is the only place known to support life, the conditions here are just right. Watch this video created by Dynamic Earth, then download the worksheet and try designing your own perfect planet.
Scotland’s Rainforest is a ‘temperate rainforest’ and is a rare world habitat, even rarer than tropical rainforests! It stretches along Scotland’s west coast. Temperate rainforests are mainly wet and mild as they tend to be costal forests, with oceanic climates. The high rainfall stable temperatures makes them very humid.
The humid environment in the rainforest makes it the perfect habitat for lichens, mosses, fungi and ferns. They help to maintain the humidity in the forest and give it a mysterious, magical feel. A sprite named Ghillie Dhu, is said to be the guardian of the forest in Scottish folklore. He lives in and protects the forest, so who better to guide you through it!
In this story, written for nursery and primary school children, Ghillie Dhu will guide you through the rainforest and introduce you to the other miniature residents – lichens, mosses, fungi and ferns. These plants also form Ghillie Dhu’s wardrobe. In the accompanying learning pack you will be tasked with finding items of his wardrobe and learning a song all the forest.
The TRiFOCAL Education Pack contains a wide variety of resources for teachers and workshop leaders, including lesson plans and learning activities.
Education resources on the topic of:
Food Waste Prevention
Food Waste Recycling
Health and Sustainable Eating
Lesson plans and resources for teachers and workshop leaders
The pack contains 5 session plans, each with accompanying resources. The pack has been designed as a 5 week project to fit into a half term. However, each lesson could be delivered as a stand-alone session.
Update – Thank you for submissions to this competition. The winners are class P7B from St Timothy’s Primary School. Congratulations! Find out more about the winning entries here.
There are thousands of science centres and museums around the world, which help inspire and empower people every day through providing reliable and trusted information.
They are a trusted information hub on everything from ancient Egypt to quantum physics. They could also help people have the information and skills to tackle climate change in their community.
We need your ideas to design them!
We are challenging you to design or redesign a museum, so that it helps people act on climate change. This might be Glasgow Science Centre, another museum you know, or one you invent. Your museum might be in your school, a phone box, a bus stop, a park or anywhere you can imagine!
What kinds of energy would it use?
How would it avoid creating waste?
What would be in its exhibitions?
How would you get there?
What would you want to learn there?
What skills would you like to develop?
Would it be a building in one place, or spread around in communities?
How could it be useful to you, and to everyone else too?
What would people talk about?
What questions would it explore?
What you can do:
You could draw your museum, make a model of it, make a film about it, or anything else. Use the form below to submit your entry, or tag us on social media using the hashtag – #ClimateMuseum. The deadline for submissions is Friday the 3rd of December 2021 and the winner will win a visit to Glasgow Science Centre.
What would your ideal Planet Earth look like? How would transport work? Where does electricity come from? How do humans and animals live in harmony?
There are so many things to think about, and there are no right or wrong answers. This is your opportunity to conceptualise your ideal future Earth – the only limit is your own imagination.
The climate crisis is being caused by an increase in greenhouse gasses leading to rising global temperatures. Anything which produces greenhouses gasses is a ‘source’. There are also things which absorb greenhouse gasses and these are called ‘sinks’.
Play our game, Source or Sink, to sort the climate crisis contributors from the carbon catchers.
The climate crisis is one of the biggest challenges facing the world today. In short, the climate crisis is being caused by an increase in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. These are being emitted by human activity such as burning fossil fuels to make electricity.
To solve big problems, like the climate crisis, we have to be really innovative. This means coming up with ways to emit less carbon dioxide, or to capture the carbon dioxide before it gets into our atmosphere.
Hamster power, kite power or artificial trees?! Discover which inventions have really been explored by scientists and which have been completely made up by Dynamic Earth, while playing their game ‘Science or Fiction?’.
Satellites help us in lots of ways from finding our way around to communicating with people, they can also tell us important things about how our planet is changing. Researchers at the WWF are even using satellites to help monitor snow leopards in the wild!
Take part in this activity by Dynamic Earth and their partners Leidos, to learn how scientists are using artificial intelligence to make predictions about snow leopards’ behaviour and when to take early action to keep them safe. Then see how camera traps, trained with machine learning, can save researchers time while studying animals. Finally, have a go yourself at spotting snow leopards that are cleverly camouflaged in their habitats.
Are you quicker than AI? – There’s only one way to find out!
Innovation doesn’t just come from scientists, but from people everywhere. This is especially important when considering the climate crisis because often the people who are affected the most are people living in areas far away from where the climate crisis is being studied. Scientists and indigenous people can work together to come up with innovative solutions to climate change driven problems.
Download this booklet from Dynamic Earth to find out about three great projects tackling climate change led by indigenous people and make a poster to let other people know about it.
Climate Change: the science is simple, the impacts are serious, the problem is solvable. GeoBus has developed the following educational resources with the aim of providing an engaging, reliable, straight-forward, and logical framework for teaching climate change.
Weather and climate are closely connected terms, and they can easily be mixed up. Watch our quick video to learn the difference.
Global climate change is already having an effect on the different weather that people are experiencing around the globe – from hotter and drier conditions, to superstorms and floods. You can find out more about the causes of climate change, but also some solutions at dynamicearthonline.co.uk/climate-and-sustainability
Over half of the world’s trees and plant are found in the rainforests, making them incredibly important ecosystems! Can you think of any reasons not mentioned in the video that make these places so important to both humans and other animals?
One reason that all trees around the world are so important is their amazing ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This makes trees vital for helping to reverse some of the effects of climate change.
Use our activity sheet to help you work out roughly how much carbon each of the trees around where you live is storing!
Don’t forget to share your results with us on social media. You can find us and tag us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram! For more nature and climate related activities, head over to dynamicearthonline.co.uk
Dive to the bottom of the ocean from the comfort of your own home!
Discover the creatures living in the deep Atlantic Ocean with our augmented reality colouring in.
Download the colouring page PDF and get creative! Then scan the QR Code on the page to download the Spectacular app which will bring your creations to life in augmented reality.
The colouring pages highlight 3 areas of the Atlantic Ocean that were investigated by scientists working on the ATLAS project, an EU funded initiative investigating the deep Atlantic Ocean.
Don’t forget to share your creations with us on social media. You can find us and tag us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 678760 (ATLAS). This outcome reflects only the author’s view and cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
Have you ever wondered how scientists study harmful air pollution when they can’t always see it? Although the pollutants can be invisible, we often see their impact on our own health and the environment around us. Discover some of the tools they use to understand the sources and effects of this problem and carry out your own air quality investigations by downloading our activity sheet here.
Don’t forget to share your craft and any interesting results you find with us on social media. You can find us and tag us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!
Find out about other kinds of pollution in our Rubbish activity here. Or find lots more activities on sustainability at #DynamicEarthOnline here.
The Promise is a new BBC film based on the children’s picture book by Nicola Davies and Laura Carlin.
It’s an urban fairy tale plays out on the mean streets of a mean city. A young thief tries to snatch an old woman’s bag, but she cannot have it without giving something in return: The Promise. It is the beginning of a journey that will change her life and a chance to change the world for good.
Discover lots of ideas about how you can make a difference and become part of a generation who are promising themselves a greener future.
Click the image to see the learning materials to accompany The Promise.
What people wear in Antarctica and how they get around has changed so much since Antarctica’s ‘heroic age’ of the early 1900s. Technology has made a huge difference. Compared to the days of Shackleton and Scott, modern fabrics and new designs in transport make it much easier to cope with Antarctica’s extreme cold and wind.
Can you dress our Antarctic Scientist in the correct order? Get him ready for work in the extreme cold so he can stay safe and warm in in the extreme cold?
Click the image below to play the interactive game, What (Not) to Wear.
Welcome to The Spark – an exciting, new magazine from Glasgow Science Centre!
Each issue will have exciting experiments for you to try at home, fascinating facts to ponder over, and puzzles and quizzes to challenge your family.
In this issue: make a miniature garden in a jar, find out how Earth recycles water through our land, oceans and skies, and meet a marine geologist who studies changes in the Earth at the bottom of the sea.
Keen to spark your curiosity further with more fun science to try at home, outdoors, or in the classroom? Read more issues of the Spark Magazine from Glasgow Science.
In this game from Scottish Water, it’s your job to clean it up! The challenge is to get the water ready to be returned safely to the environment. By cleaning the water up, you protect our planet and the wonderful wildlife that call it home.
Click the image below to play, Clean it Up (opens in new tab).
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design your own transport of the future. What is your vision for future transport and what will it look like?
Jennifer is here to help us learn about water and the water cycle and its importance to life on our planet. Plus, you’ll get to make your own tiny terrarium to adorn your home.
Become a wasp, build your nest and grow your colony in the face of unexpected hazards. Can you make it through the year?
Wasps are nature’s pest-controllers and pollinators. This game is based on observations of the complex social life of the European paper wasp and was created by UCI and fo.am, funded by NERC, UKRI.
Click the image below to play The Wasp Love Game (opens in new tab).