Crest Star Science Award

We have signed up to membership of the Crest Star science award scheme with several other local home educating families. There are three levels and we have started with the lowest - the Star award as Harry is only 5 but the other two levels cover KS1/2 and KS2. We have to complete 8 investigations from a selection of 20 and there is an organiser card and activity card for each. These activities are good for getting us thinking at an early stage in terms of proper scientific investigation and there are useful prompts for further questions to ask on the sheets.

We have done 2 investigations so far. 

Confusing Cans involved taking the labels off a variety of food cans (we used 5) and trying to work out the contents by rolling them down a slope, listening to the contents when shaken and feeling the weight. We then also compared the cans without labels to the same food cans with the labels still on. These photos are terrible, sorry!

I made a record sheet for this activity to record the children's estimate of which can contained which food, how far each rolled and which can actually contained which food.

Our second activity was Slippery Shoes, which involved using a variety of shoes with different soles to see which slid down a slope and which gripped. This led to discussions about friction. We also changed the surface of the slope to observe the effect and talked about what might reduce friction and where friction might be useful.