The websites below provide a wide variety of hands-on activities, interactive games, quizzes, virtual experiments, and several other materials to engage young minds in immersive learning experiences covering various science topics and phenomena. Using a mixture of science knowledge and technology, children will get to explore the world of science in fun and engaging ways.

• NASA Kids' Club - NASA Kids’ Club provides a plethora of space focused games, videos, images and activities to introduce and help kids learn about the world of space.

• BrainPOP Science - BrainPOP offers educational animated videos and lessons covering different science topics. Each featured science topic comes with illustrative videos, quizzes, and accompanying activities.

• Discovery Kids - Another excellent source of educational video content to help kids learn about different science topics. The site also provides interactive games and links to mobile science apps for kids.

• Science Kids - As its name indicates, Science for Kids is a website that features a treasure trove of educational science materials. These include online games, experiments, lesson plans, quizzes, science projects, free activities and many more.

• National Geographic Kids - Nat Geo Kids enables science lovers to explore the world of science through a collection of apps, games, magazines, toys, videos, and many other materials.

1. Show interest

Find out their termly topics (most schools will provide this information each term, or you can always ask their teacher) and take an interest — find relevant books in the library or bookshop, do some research, brush up your own knowledge about the topic! Then you can have interesting conversations where you are both learning at the same time.

2. Encourage curiosity

Science learning begins with curiosity. Observations and questions can create a climate of discovery – key to scientific learning. Children can learn a lot about science even at bath time. Let your child ask her/his own questions but you can also stimulate curiosity. For instance, when seeing a rubber duck float in the water, invite him/her to think by saying, “I wonder if the soap will also float?" See what questions your child asks and what experiments she/he tries.

3. Get hands-on

Look up fun, practical science experiments you can do at home with everyday objects. Accept that explorations are often messy. Whether it’s outdoor exploration with mud and sticks or indoors with water, children are likely to get dirty when they explore materials. Dress children in old clothing and tell them it’s ok to get dirty.

For example:

• Ask ‘What happens when you mix food colouring in milk?’ Then add washing up liquid and watch what happens.
• Why not try making your own mini exploding volcano? Just add bicarbonate of soda, food colouring, washing up liquid and vinegar. Then stand back and watch the eruption!
• Cooking is also a great opportunity to mix ingredients, add heat and examine changing states.
• Try exploring changing states with ice and water to begin to see those changes that can be reversed and those that can’t.
• A real favourite would have to be ‘gloop’ — use water and cornflour (add food colouring too if needed) to explore solids and liquids. Just be prepared to get messy!
• Of course, there are also some wonderful science kits available to buy to push your scientists further – making crystals, rockets and even bouncy balls.

4. Accept mistakes!

Learn from mistakes together. If an experiment goes wrong, take advantage and investigate with your child to see what went wrong. A mistake can lead to all kinds of possibilities and it provides opportunities for you and your child to refine your ideas, understanding, and hypotheses.

5. Take a trip

Why not take a trip to a science museum, park, a zoo or an aquarium? These don’t necessarily need to be completely related to what they are learning about at school. Any visit can help their curiosity and engagement with science generally.

6. Record observations

Encourage children to record their observations. Writing, drawing, or taking photographs are all ways to record observations - an important scientific skill. Such records allow children to keep track of what they saw, heard, questioned, or discovered. When you notice your child is interested in something (like the moon, leaves changing on the trees, or the growth of a plant) you can suggest ways for them to record what they have observed. “Do you want to draw that?” or “Do you want to take photos?” or “Do you want me to help you write down what you noticed?”

7. Give time and space for exploring

Find out about famous scientists and research unique and exciting inventions up to and including the present day. Who knows, you may have the next Stephen Hawking or Marie Curie at home! Explore and find the answers together. You as a parent don’t have to be your child's encyclopaedia and quickly try to answer all your child’s questions. Responding with “What do you think?” or “I don’t know but we can find out together” can stimulate more thought and additional questions. Explore and find the answers together.

8. Use your electronic devices

Make good use of your electronic devices. Take pictures of a stunning butterfly, record frog sounds, use a website or app to learn more about a specific phenomenon or creature.

Skills

• Describe and evaluate their own and others’ scientific ideas related to topics in the national curriculum (including ideas that have changed over time), using evidence from a range of sources
• Ask their own questions about the scientific phenomena that they are studying, and select the most appropriate ways to answer these questions, recognising and controlling variables where necessary (i.e. observing changes over different periods of time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying things, carrying out comparative and fair tests, and finding things out using a wide range of secondary sources)
• Use a range of scientific equipment to take accurate and precise measurements or readings, with repeat readings where appropriate
• Record data and results using scientific diagrams and labels, classification keys, tables, scatter graphs, bar and line graphs
• Draw conclusions, explain and evaluate their methods and findings, communicating these in a variety of ways
• Raise further questions that could be investigated, based on their data and observations.

Knowledge

• Name and describe the functions of the main parts of the digestive (year 4), musculoskeletal (year 3) and circulatory systems (year 6); and describe and compare different reproductive processes and life cycles in animals (year 5)
• Describe the effects of diet, exercise, drugs and lifestyle on how the body functions (year 6)
• Name, locate and describe the functions of the main parts of plants, including those involved in reproduction (year 5) and transporting water and nutrients (year 3)
• Use the observable features of plants, animals and microorganisms to group, classify and identify them into broad groups, using keys or other methods (year 6)
• Construct and interpret food chains (year 4)
• Describe the requirements of plants for life and growth (year 3); and explain how environmental changes may have an impact on living things (year 4)
• Use the basic ideas of inheritance, variation and adaptation to describe how living things have changed over time and evolved (year 6); and describe how fossils are formed (year 3) and provide evidence for evolution (year 6)
• Group and identify materials (year 5), including rocks (year 3), in different ways according to their properties, based on first-hand observation; and justify the use of different everyday materials for different uses, based on their properties (year 5)
• Describe the characteristics of different states of matter and group materials on this basis; and describe how materials change state at different temperatures, using this to explain everyday phenomena, including the water cycle (year 4)
• Identify and describe what happens when dissolving occurs in everyday situations; and describe how to separate mixtures and solutions into their components (year 5)
• Identify, with reasons, whether changes in materials are reversible or not (year 5)
• Use the idea that light from light sources, or reflected light, travels in straight lines and enters our eyes to explain how we see objects (year 6), and the formation (year 3), shape (year 6) and size of shadows (year 3)
• Use the idea that sounds are associated with vibrations, and that they require a medium to travel through, to explain how sounds are made and heard (year 4)
• Describe the relationship between the pitch of a sound and the features of its source; and between the volume of a sound, the strength of the vibrations and the distance from its source (year 4)
• Describe the effects of simple forces that involve contact (air and water resistance, friction) (year 5), that act at a distance (magnetic forces, including those between like and unlike magnetic poles) (year 3), and gravity (year 5)
• Identify simple mechanisms, including levers, gears and pulleys, that increase the effect of a force (year 5)
• Use simple apparatus to construct and control a series circuit, and describe how the circuit may be affected when changes are made to it; and use recognised symbols to represent simple series circuit diagrams (year 6)
• Describe the shapes and relative movements of the Sun, Moon, Earth and other planets in the  solar system; and explain the apparent movement of the sun across the sky in terms of the Earth’s rotation and that this results in day and night (year 5).