This is part of Encounter Edu’s additional guidance for using the website during the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak. During this period of uncertainty, school closures and self-isolation, parents and teachers may need to teach differently.

Our STEAM Activities are ready to use during school closures. STEAM simply stands for Science Technology Engineering Art and Math(s). This means that in our STEAM Activities, you will find standalone and hands-on experiments, investigations and craft activities.

Each of these has been designed to develop understanding of topics based on our science expeditions and projects.

They are easy for teachers to set as home learning and most require little in the way of specialist equipment and we hope that parents and carers will be able to find a fair few that will not require a trip to the shops.

Each activity contains four basic areas of information:

• A list of activity steps, a bit like a recipe
• Any safety tips or guidance (yes, most require at least a modicum of adult supervision)
• A list of what you’ll need to complete the activity
• Additional information to deepen the learning

If you have just transitioned to being a full-time teacher, you can use these activities thematically, as though you were running a science club. You will see that the different activities are colour-coded. These colours relate to the different expeditions and projects that we have been working on. Ice grey for the Arctic, coral red for the reef, bright yellow for submarines, pale blue for plastics, and sea blue for cross-cutting ocean themes. Used once a week, these will see you through an entire academic year, or set up some themed weeks or fortnights.