It wasn’t just people on Earth who were glued to the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics – astronauts on the ISS were inspired by the athletes, too! They added elements of Olympic sports to their training programmes (and it looks like they had a lot of fun doing it, too!)
Watch the astronauts who were inspired by the Olympics here!
Read more fascinating science stories like this one in every edition of Whizz Pop Bang – find out how to subscribe here!
Professor Lynne Boddy is a woodland fungi expert at Cardiff University and she told us all about her amazing career in Whizz Pop Bang 99: Fantastic Fungi.
Lynne has written a beautiful book, Humungous Fungus, an exploration of all things fungi which will amaze young readers, and open their eyes to the fungi thriving all around them and we’ve got four copies to give away!
Simply answer this question in the comments for your chance to win a book.
Which one is a part of a mushroom?
a) Gill
b) Hill
c) Spill
Good luck!
This competition closes at midnight on 31st October 2023 and is open for UK residents only. For full terms and conditions visit whizzpopbang.com/terms
Humongous Fungus, written by Lynne Boddy and illustrated by Wenjia Tang. DK, £12.99. Out Now.
Helen Scales is a marine biologist, writer, broadcaster, teacher and scuba diver who stars as our Science Hero in Whizz Pop Bang 96: Coasts. Read more about her in this issue, now available in our shop. She tells us all about her exciting job, including some of the books she has written, and we’re so excited to have five sets of two of these books to give away to mini marine biologists!
Scientists in the Wild: Galápagos by Helen Scales follows a group of marine biologists as they set sail to study the amazing wildlife and habitats of the Galápagos. To get the job done they will climb volcanoes, get sneezed on by marine iguanas, watch dancing birds, launch a deep-diving submersible and explore the dazzling underwater wonders of Galápagos.
Great Barrier Reef by Helen Scales (released 6th July 2023) introduces this incredible, intricate Australian ecosystem to young readers. Discover the plant and animal inhabitants of the Great Barrier Reef in this beautifully illustrated book, then find out what we can all do to ensure its survival.
To enter the competition, simply answer the following question in the comments:
Where is the Great Barrier Reef?
a) Australia
b) South America
c) Antarctica
The competition closes at midnight on 31st July 2023. For full terms and conditions, please visit: https://www.whizzpopbang.com/terms-and-conditions/.
Want to know more about Whizz Pop Bang – the awesomely amazing science magazine for kids?
To celebrate Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day on the 25th February 2023, here are some fun and inspiring activities and interviews to share with the girls in your life. You never know, one might grow up to be an engineer!
Reading comprehension: Electrical Engineer
Find out what it’s like to be an electrical engineering whizz with this inspirational interview with Nikita Hari. Includes the feature to print or to read on a tablet, as well as comprehension question and answer sheet.
Engineering activity: Design your own bridge
Get busy designing and building your own bridge and experiment to see how much weight it can hold!
Reading comprehension: Explosions Engineer
Find out why Kate Biberdorf loves to blow things up to inspire her students! Includes the feature to print or to read on a tablet, as well as comprehension question and answer sheets.
Engineering activity: Water wheel lifter
Can you lift a weight using the power of water? Try this fun science activity to find out!
Engineering activity: Make a model wind turbine activity
Print, cut and craft a model wind turbine to try out in windy weather!
Subscribers to Whizz Pop Bang are automatically enrolled to the Y’s Wonder Club and can complete science challenges to earn collectible enamel badges!
Epic Engineer Badge
Think like an engineer to earn an Epic Engineer badge! Identify a problem, design a solution, get building, then test and improve your design.
Click here to find out more…
Fill your child with science wonder with a subscription to Whizz Pop Bang, the award-winning magazine for 6 to 12-year-olds. Watch their face light up with glee when their very own magazine zooms through the letterbox! Packed full of hands-on science awesomeness, it’s the gift that keeps of delighting, month after month.
To celebrate Black History Month and Mae Jemison’s birthday on 17th October, we’re giving away a free sample page from Whizz Pop Bang magazine – a feature all about engineer, doctor, astronaut, dancer and scientist, Dr Mae Jemison.
And that’s not all… if you’re looking for primary science teaching resources or reading comprehensions, you’re in luck. Keep scrolling to find a heap of resources linked to this biography text!
A biography text for year 3 and P4, linking to the topics animals including humans and body systems and cells, on the remarkable scientist Mae Jemison. Mae Jemison trained to be a dancer, engineer, scientist and astronaut! Mae also spends lots of time teaching and encouraging young people to become scientists, no matter what their background. She wants us all to reach for the stars, and she is still doing this herself by leading a project to develop the science and engineering needed to travel to a different solar system in the next 100 years. Mae doesn’t want anyone to be left out.
Year groups: Year 3 and P4
Topics: Animals including humans
Our award-winning resources…
🧪Are compiled by expert teachers and scientists
🧪 Bring science to life in your child’s classroom
🧪 Are easy to download
🧪 Make planning science lessons simple
🧪 Link to the National Curriculum for England and the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence for primary schools
Our award-winning downloadable resources make it easy for teachers to teach inspirational science to primary school children. We have a huge library of over 300 curriculum-linked science and reading resources, including hands-on science lesson plans, stimulating science reading comprehensions and science vocabulary posters.
Your school can download FREE sample resource packs via our website, and claim a FREE copy of Whizz Pop Bang magazine, too! Simply click ‘Sign up for FREE resources‘ on our schools page…
The lesson plans from Whizz Pop Bang are fantastic – exactly what teachers want! Written by teachers, for teachers, they are clearly laid out and concisely written so you can pick them up and use them straight away.”
Paul Tyler, Primary Science Lead, Glasgow
“The resources and magazines are linked to the science curriculum and support cross-subject learning. Plus they’re bursting with awesome experiments that my less confident colleagues can teach with ease!”
Kay Wilkie, Shawridge Primary School
Today is International Friendship Day and we’re celebrating a friendship that led to some super-important scientific developments!
The amazing Ada Lovelace was born in London in 1815, and loved maths and poetry from a young age. When she was a teenager, she met a mathematician and inventor called Charles Babbage. Charles was fed up of doing long calculations by hand, so he invented a machine that could do sums for him. He called it the Difference Engine.
Ada was really interested in the Difference Engine. She was inspired to study maths harder than ever before, and she and Charles became good friends.
Charles later invented a machine, called the Analytical Engine, that could do ANY calculations by following a series of steps – but it was so complicated that he found it hard to explain to other people how it would work!
Ada came to the rescue. She was so good at maths that she understood the machine and was able to explain it to other people. Ada wrote a code that turned a real-life maths problem into a list of instructions that the machine could understand. This was the world’s first algorithm (computer code).
She and Charles made a great team! Sadly, Ada died before she could actually help Charles to get the machine made, but the discovery that machines could follow instructions led to the amazing computers that we all use so much today.
Find out more about this fantastic friendship and the science of coding in Whizz Pop Bang: CODING CAPERS!
To celebrate International Women’s Day on Monday 8th March, we’ve shared some stories of some inspirational scientists. You’ll find more fantastic free reading resources, as well as loads of home science activities and experiments, right here!
Are you a primary teacher looking for inspiring scientist role models? Keep scrolling to find reading comprehensions about these incredible women!
Find out which of these scientists are trained to travel to the Moon, who started their career aged 13 and who blows things up for a living!
Jessica Watkins, NASA Astronaut
Nikita Hari, Electrical Engineer
Agnes Arber, Plant Scientist
Kate Biberdorf, Explosions Engineer
Jessica Watkins, NASA Astronaut
Read about fully trained astronaut Jessica Watkins who hopes to soon be able to fly to the Moon as part of the Artemis missions to the Moon! Includes the feature to print or to read on a tablet, as well as comprehension question and answer sheets. Ideal for Year 5 / P6.
Nikita Hari, Electrical Engineer
Find out what it’s like to be an electrical engineering whizz with this inspirational interview with Nikita Hari. Includes the feature to print or to read on a tablet, as well as comprehension question and answer sheet. Ideal for Year 6 / P7
Agnes Arber, Plant Scientist
Read about sensational scientist Agnes Arber, whose career as a plant scientist started when she was just 13! Includes the feature to print or to read on a tablet, as well as comprehension question and answer sheets. Ideal for Year 3 / P4
Kate Biberdorf, Explosions Engineer
Find out why Kate Biberdorf loves to blow things up to inspire her students! Includes the feature to print or to read on a tablet, as well as comprehension question and answer sheets. Ideal for Year 4 / P3
If you think these could be useful in your classroom, you’ll love Whizz Pop Bang’s amazing science and reading resources for schools! Find out more here.
Now that schools are closed, have you become a home educator overnight? Whizz Pop Bang is the world’s most awesomely amazing kids’ science magazine, bursting with hands-on experiments, facts and fun, and we want to help you and your children with the huge transition that many of us face.
Here are some FREE science activities and experiments to help you entertain, excite and educate your year 3 child! Meet an orthopaedic vet, be inspired by an amazing female scientist, do a walking water experiment, investigate air pressure and surface tension and make bendy bones!
Our experiments are designed for children from 6 to 12, but this list of experiments is particularly perfect for year 3, P4 (Scotland), 7-year-olds and 8-year-olds as they tie in with the relevant National Curriculum objectives and topics.
The reading comprehensions included here were designed to be read at A3 size, so text may appear too small when printed at A4. They work really well on a tablet or monitor, or you may need to print them on two pages of A4 if your printer allows.
If you have any comments or questions about our free year 3 science experiments and reading comprehensions, please leave a comment for us. Or do you have any science homeschool ideas or general home educating ideas for 7- and 8-year-olds? We’d love to hear from you!
This is a great one for animal lovers! An interview with Toby Gemmill, whose job is to put broken pets back together after an accident. He explains how long bones take to mend, describes the trickiest operation he’s performed and gives some top tips on how to become a vet. Small snippets of text ideal for reluctant readers.
This downloadable reading pack includes:
– An interview with Toby Gemmill for you to print or for your child to read on a tablet.
– Reading comprehension question sheet and answer sheet.
Topic links: Year 2 Animals including humans
Read about sensational scientist Agnes Arber, whose career as a plant scientist started when she was just 13! Her dedication to botany helped the world to realise the amazing talent of women in science.
This downloadable reading pack includes:
– A feature about Agnes Arber for you to print or for your child to read on a tablet.
– Reading comprehension question sheet and answer sheet.
Topic links: Year 3 Plants and P3 Biodiversity and interdependence
Ask your child if they think water can ‘walk’? Set up a nifty experiment together to prove that it actually can move and discover how plants transport water using capillary action.
You will need:
Water
Kitchen towels
Food colouring
Investigate surface tension and air pressure while learning a neat trick: how to turn a glass of water upside down without spilling a drop!
Topic links: Year 3 Plants and P4 Biodiversity and interdependence
Discover how the backbone is able to bend, even though it’s made of rigid elements, by creating a model backbone from vertebrae and cartilage!
You will need:
A 5 cm paperclip
A drinking straw
Scissors
A ruler
Sticky tack or Plasticine
Discover what happens when bones don’t contain enough calcium in this intriguing experiment.
You will need:
2 chicken bones (legs are ideal)
Jar with a lid (large enough to hold one bone with space at the top)
Vinegar
Cling film
Topic links: Year 3 Animals including humans and P4 Biological systems.
Are you home educating children in other year groups? Then you might find these posts helpful:
Free science activities for year 2 and P3
Free science activities for year 4 and P5
Free science activities for year 5 and P6
Free science activities for year 6 and P7
This month’s Whizz Pop Bang magazine is all about SCIENCE SUPERPOWERS, so we’ve arranged a competition that is all about a real-life superhero who wants to save the Earth: Greta Thunberg!
We’ve got six copies of We Are All Greta by Valentina Gianella to give away! This beautifully illustrated book will take you on a journey of hope, resilience and curiosity as we take a a look inside Greta’s life. From drinking water to fossil fuels, from hashtags to education, the book is packed with scientific facts and ideas of things we can all do to help protect our planet.
Just answer this question in the comments to be in with a chance of winning one of six copies!
How many trees are cut down every year?*
1. 15
2. Around 15 million
3. Up to 15 billion
*According to figures reported by WWF
This competition closes on 31st December 2019. For full terms and conditions visit whizzpopbang.com/terms
Words: Nell O’Neill
Each month, when Whizz Pop Bang arrives in his classroom, Mr Tyler creates a new Whizz Pop Bang scrapbook.
The children take it in turns to bring both the scrapbook and the copy of Whizz Pop Bang magazine home for the weekend so they can have fun doing a STEM activity, reading the magazine or just doing the puzzles. The children love writing in the scrapbook and proudly sticking in their photos, experiment results and observations. It’s not compulsory, it’s not homework – it’s all about having fun with science at home – and kids, parents, teachers and even Ofsted are loving it!
Toby Tyler, Teacher at Great Moor Infant School in Stockport
Mr Tyler also uses the tag #WPBShare on Twitter to proudly share his class’s Whizz Pop Bang achievements – check it out and tweet us your class’s science achievements too @whizzpopbangmag
Such a cool experiment, well done to this super scientist! #wpbshare https://t.co/vgAwbQsqy4
— Whizz Pop Bang mag (@whizzpopbangmag) 25 September 2018