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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Simple experiments for KS2 scientists

Boy wearing goggles holding test tube
Have you got a budding Galileo or Newton in the family? Help your child's developing scientific enquiries by finding out what they will be learning in science lessons and how to support their practice at home.

Science at Key Stage 2 offers children the opportunity to develop their knowledge and understanding of scientific processes and consider the skills and concepts behind them. They learn to share ideas and consider ways in which their theories can be tested.

Experimental and investigative science

Your child will develop investigative skills and be taught that it is important to test ideas using evidence from observation and measurement. They are encouraged to think about what might happen when test conditions are altered, and about the type of evidence, equipment and materials to use in experiments.

Life and living processes

Children learn about life processes common to humans, animals and plants (such as nutrition, movement, growth and reproduction); about the role of the skeleton and muscles to support and protect us and help us to move; that the heart acts as a pump to circulate the blood around the body.

They will also discover microorganisms, learning that these are tiny living organisms that can be beneficial (for example, in the breakdown of waste) or harmful (for example, in causing disease or food to go mouldy).

Materials

Your child will be grouping and classifying materials, exploring their everyday uses and the effects of processes (such as heating, dissolving, melting, freezing, and evaporating). They will also discover how to separate solid particles by sieving.

Physical processes

In this strand of science, your child will be constructing circuits and understanding how they work. They will also explore attraction and repulsion between magnets and magnetic materials, and gravity.

Light and sound will be investigated. Your child will learn that light cannot pass through some materials and that sounds are really vibrations that require a medium (for example, metal, wood, glass, air) through which to travel to the ear.

Finally, children will learn about the sun, earth and moon - how day and night are related to the spin of the earth, that the earth orbits the sun once each year, and that the moon takes approximately 28 days to orbit the earth.

Help your child at home

  • Look up information about the different food types required for a balanced diet. Why are they needed? Plan a balanced meal together.
     
  • Look at books together on the life cycle stages and talk about them.
     
  • Plant mustard seeds in soil and place them in different environments - dark, light, wet and dry. After a determined period, look at them and note the differences. Draw the differences or take photographs and get books to find out some information about what causes these variations.
     
  • Show your child how to change a plug.
     
  • Try simple experiments with your child. Make observations such as, “When I put a seed in a wet environment it grows” or “If I place a round object on a flat surface it rolls”, or ask questions such as, “What happens if I put sugar in a full cup of water at room temperature?” “What will happen if I continue to add sugar?”
     
  • Make them aware of the contributions of different nations to science.