At Bright Little Labs, we love everything STEM. From children’s fiction that introduces the concepts of coding (like our very own Agent Asha: Mission Shark Bytes), to cool educational tools from the likes of NASA and the Royal Academy of Engineering. We love creative toys that kindle curiosity – and we think there is a sea of amazing STEM teaching resources out there for teachers to explore. Here is a peek at some of the resources we ❤️
Resources for Coding and Computing
Agent Asha: Mission Shark Bytes ⚡
Agent Asha is the latest character from our Bright Little Labs family. This 11-year old British-Asian tech-geek from London introduces the concepts of coding, problem-solving and critical thinking through the exciting digital spy adventures she undertakes for the super-secret Children’s Spy Agency (CSA).
The books follow the National Computing Curriculum and are complemented with offline activities, online games and live experiences. There are also plenty of adaptable teaching materials and resources on our website for you to download for free.
Who’s it for? KS1-KS2
Lego Education SPIKE 🖥️
Lego Spike is a clever tool that taps into children’s endless love for Lego and uses it to introduce them to coding languages like Scratch and Python. The creators have combined regular building elements with easy-to-use hardware and incorporated drag-and-drop coding through some playful learning activities. The lesson plans are curriculum-aligned and adaptable to fit a range of different learning environments.
Who’s it for? Age group: 10+
Barefoot 🧠
Barefoot is a great initiative from BT and Computing at School(CAS) aimed at primary school teachers across the UK. The platform has a range of lessons and online guides on computational thinking, concepts and approaches
Who’s it for? KS1 – KS3
Teaching Resources for Space and Engineering
📡NASA Educational Research Tools
NASA has a pretty impressive collection of free tools - lesson plans, posters and STEM educator guides for different age groups. And it’s not all about space. There is a vast library of resources on maths, technology and science in general.
We especially love the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Flight STEM Learning Module. The teaching materials come with interesting methods to explore sound, matter and energy, and weaves in some fascinating experiments on flight and aeronautics.
Who’s it for? All age groups
📡Discovery Education
STEM Connect from Discovery Education is another brilliant resource with some inspiring material for children from KS1 to KS3. The material is designed so children can take up a real-world problem, produce a solution, find out how a real STEM professional would solve it, evaluate their success and make the required changes.
Who’s it for? KS1 - KS3
📡STEM Resources from the Royal Academy of Engineering
There are a variety of teaching resources and hands-on activities here to inspire budding engineers. From activities based on behind-the-scenes-engineering in movies, to complex aircraft design – there are lots of fun themes that are all linked to the curriculum requirements of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Who’s it for? KS2 – KS4
Teaching Resources for Maths
📐Twinkl
Twinkl has an original, fun and exciting range of printable worksheets and resources for different age groups. The vibrant hand-drawn illustrations are also a refreshing change from old ClipArt!
Who’s it for? All ages
📐nRich Maths
nRich Maths has some great primary and secondary teaching resources to explore the maths involved in engineering, science and technology. The module on Disease Dynamics is one of our favourites🧪
With the arrival of the pandemic, most children have a general idea of how infectious diseases spread, but it's often difficult for them to comprehend the dynamics of the spread. The Disease Dynamics module does a great job of helping children dig further, and helps them to understand how maths can be used to analyse the spread of infectious diseases. There is also a range of similar cross-curricular activity sets to suit different age groups.
Who’s it for? All ages
🔬The importance of STEM
At Bright Little Labs, we're on a mission to encourage every child to embrace and enjoy STEM subjects. We believe it's never been more important for kids to learn critical thinking and coding as these subjects shape the jobs of tomorrow. We just wrote a blog about it in fact! Head over now and take a look! 👀