ScienceHow to use these pages
Each topic takes about ten minutes to read. Read the explanation, note the key terms, try the activity and then answer the quick questions without looking. Tap "Mark this topic as learnt" when you can answer them all; a tick then appears beside the topic in these lists, in your browser.
The class range is a typical guide. Your board or school may teach a topic a year earlier or later, so look for the topic by name. For examinations, read the same chapter in your prescribed textbook. How to study science has a simple plan.
What science means in classes 3 to 5
At this stage science is mostly careful looking. Children learn to sort things into groups (living and non-living, solids, liquids and gases), to name parts (root, stem, leaf; stomach, intestine), and to follow simple cycles and chains: water going up as vapour and coming down as rain, food passing from a plant to an animal to another animal. There are almost no formulas. What matters is the right word for the right thing and a reason for each fact.
A good order to read in
Begin with living and non-living things, then the plant topics: parts of a plant, photosynthesis, the food chain. Go next to the body topics, digestion and a balanced diet. Then take the world around us: air, the water cycle and states of matter, which explain each other. Keep the solar system, day and night, and simple machines for the end.
For parents and teachers
- Do the activity on each page. A seed growing in a glass jar teaches more than a paragraph about germination.
- Ask "why do you think so?" more often than "what is the answer?".
- Let the child draw. A labelled drawing of a plant or of the water cycle is how these topics are asked in exams, and it is also how they are remembered.
- Link each topic to the house: steam from the cooker, a see-saw in the park, the food on the plate.