KS2 science resources include lesson plans, worksheets, videos, experiments and activities that help teachers deliver the National Curriculum for science to pupils in Years 3 to 6. These materials cover biology topics like living things and habitats, chemistry concepts such as states of matter, and physics subjects including forces, light and electricity.
You’ll find free and paid resources from educational websites, curriculum providers and teaching platforms all over the UK.
When you find quality resources, you save hours of planning each week. LearningMole, a UK educational platform set up by Michelle Connolly, offers curriculum-aligned science videos and teaching materials made for primary schools.
Michelle Connolly, a former primary teacher with over 15 years in the classroom, says, “the right resources help children see science as an exciting journey of discovery rather than just facts to memorise.”
Great KS2 science resources do more than just explain things. They get pupils working scientifically: asking questions, planning investigations and analysing results.
Whether you’re in a classroom or supporting learning at home, engaging materials make science lessons more enjoyable and effective for everyone.
Key Takeaways
KS2 science resources are teaching and learning materials that support children aged 7 to 11 as they explore biology, chemistry and physics. These include worksheets, lesson plans, experiments and digital tools that match National Curriculum requirements for Key Stage 2.
KS2 science resources help teachers deliver engaging lessons across Years 3 to 6. They cover topics like living things, materials, forces, electricity and space.
Teachers save hours of planning and still cover the curriculum. Good materials provide structured investigations that help children develop scientific enquiry skills and critical thinking.
They support different learning styles with hands-on experiments, visual diagrams and written tasks.
Primary resources for science spark curiosity about the natural world. Pupils get chances to ask questions, make predictions and analyse results.
This foundation prepares them for more complex science in Key Stage 3 and after.
Lesson Plans and Slide Decks give you ready-to-teach content with clear objectives and success criteria. Many come with starter activities, main investigations and built-in assessment tasks.
Worksheets and Printables offer practice for recording observations, completing diagrams or reinforcing vocabulary. These are great for independent work or homework.
Practical Experiments walk teachers through investigations using everyday materials. You’ll get equipment lists, safety notes and expected results.
Digital Resources include interactive games, videos and online quizzes for visual and kinaesthetic learners. Science Resources Guide platforms often feature videos on topics from plants and animals to the human body.
Assessment Tools like exit quizzes and knowledge checks help you measure what pupils understand and spot any gaps.
You can find free science primary resources on many educational websites and platforms. Oak National Academy has complete units with slides, worksheets and assessments that match the National Curriculum.
LearningMole offers curriculum-aligned videos and teaching materials from experienced educators. The platform supports UK teachers and parents with free content on key science topics for primary children.
Subject-specific websites like National Geographic Kids focus on topics like forces, climate change and the environment. Educational publishers such as Twinkl and PlanBee have both free and paid resources, including experiments and schemes of work.
Professional organisations like the IET share British Science Week activities for KS2 classrooms. Local authority sites and teaching forums also have resources from practising teachers.
KS2 science resources need to match curriculum requirements across biology, chemistry and physics. The national curriculum for England sets out what scientific knowledge and skills pupils should develop from Years 3 to 6.
The curriculum splits KS2 science into topic areas that build understanding. Years 3 and 4 cover plants, animals including humans, rocks, light, forces and magnets, and states of matter in Year 4.
Years 5 and 6 go further with properties and changes of materials, living things and their habitats, animals including humans, Earth and space, and forces. You need to teach both scientific knowledge and working scientifically skills together.
Resources organised by National Curriculum topics help you find materials for your current unit. Make sure to cover comparative tests, pattern seeking, classifying and grouping, and researching with secondary sources.
LearningMole has science videos that fit the curriculum, including states of matter, forces and materials. You can use these to introduce or reinforce topics.
Science concepts get more complex as pupils move through Key Stage 2. Year 3 pupils compare and group rocks by appearance, while Year 5 pupils investigate properties like hardness, solubility and conductivity.
Your approach to working scientifically should develop alongside subject knowledge. Year 3 students start with systematic observations, but by Year 6 they plan different types of enquiries and identify variables.
Progression-focused materials help you pitch lessons at the right level. Check that resources include the right scientific vocabulary for each year group.
Younger pupils learn terms like ‘evaporation’ and ‘fair test’. Older pupils use ‘reversible change’ and ‘variables’.
You should assess both scientific knowledge and enquiry skills throughout KS2. Pupils measure temperature in degrees Celsius when they study states of matter and changing materials.
Working scientifically skills need regular assessment during practical activities. Watch to see if pupils can set up fair tests, take accurate measurements and draw conclusions.
Assessment resources like exit quizzes help you check understanding at the end of lessons. Many teachers use both practical observations and written tasks to get a full picture of pupils’ science development.
Teachers can find a wide range of materials to help students explore organisms, ecosystems and the links between them. These resources cover plant and animal classification, microorganisms and how different environments support life.
Living things and their habitats resources support teaching classification and characteristics throughout KS2. Use video clips, interactive activities and printables to show how scientists group organisms by shared features.
Year 4 students learn about grouping living things. Year 5 and 6 pupils study life cycles and reproduction.
Ready-to-teach lesson packs come with clear plans and slides, saving you prep time.
Many platforms offer hands-on activities for sorting animals into vertebrates and invertebrates. Students explore life cycles facts to see how organisms change from birth to adulthood.
LearningMole provides free videos on animal classification and plant structures that fit National Curriculum needs.
KS2 pupils often find microorganisms fascinating because they can’t see them without magnification. Try using magnifying glasses and simple microscopes to introduce bacteria, fungi and other tiny living things.
Year 6 students learn that microorganisms can be helpful or harmful. Teaching resources should cover good bacteria in yoghurt production and decomposition, as well as harmful microbes that cause disease.
Visual aids and diagrams help show cell structures and compare types of microorganisms.
Learning where animals live and what they eat is key in the KS2 science curriculum. Teaching materials for habitats offer activities to explore local and global environments.
You can teach adaptation by comparing how different organisms survive in their habitats. Desert animals, rainforest creatures and polar species all show unique features that help them cope.
World biomes resources explain how climate and location affect which living things survive in different areas.
Food chain activities help pupils grasp energy transfer and interdependence. Use sorting cards for producers, consumers and predators, or take learning outdoors to spot real food chains in your school grounds.
Forces and magnets are a core part of the Year 3 National Curriculum. Pupils learn how objects move, what stops them, and how magnetic materials behave.
These ideas help children understand the physical world with hands-on experiments and observations.
A force is a push or pull that makes objects move, stop or change direction. Contact forces happen when objects touch, like when you kick a football or squeeze a sponge.
Non-contact forces work without touching. A magnet pulling a paper clip from a distance is a good example.
Push and pull forces are simple to understand. When you push a door open or pull a drawer, you use force.
The amount of force changes how fast or far something moves.
Teaching resources about forces and magnets often include practical experiments. Children test pushes and pulls, investigate which surface lets a toy car roll furthest, or see how much force moves objects of different weights.
Gravity pulls everything towards Earth. You drop something, it falls. You stand on the ground instead of floating away. Without gravity, nothing would have weight, which is a strange thought.
Friction slows things down when two surfaces rub against each other. Rough surfaces make more friction than smooth ones. Try pushing a box across carpet, then slide it across a wooden floor. The difference is obvious.
Children can try out these ideas in simple ways. They might slide objects down ramps with different coverings or drop items of different weights and notice gravity pulls them down at the same rate. Free science videos about forces show these ideas in action.
Magnets have two poles: north and south. Opposites attract, and like poles push away from each other. This makes magnets handy in all sorts of places at home or school.
Fridge doors stay shut because of magnetic strips. Speakers and headphones use magnets to help create sound. Some toys snap together or move thanks to magnets.
Iron, nickel and cobalt are magnetic materials. Most other things, like wood, plastic and aluminium, aren’t magnetic. Children often enjoy sorting classroom objects into magnetic and non-magnetic groups.
LearningMole has free curriculum-aligned videos showing magnets at work in real life. There are also ready-to-teach lesson resources for forces with investigation activities where pupils use magnets to solve problems or build simple machines.
Matter comes in three main forms that children see every day. Each state acts differently, depending on how its particles are arranged and how they move. The water cycle shows these changes happening naturally.
Solids keep their shape because their particles pack tightly together and vibrate in place. You can pick up a book or pencil because it keeps its form. Liquids flow and fill the shape of their container, as their particles move around each other but stay close.
Pour water into a glass, and it spreads out to fill the space. Gases fill any container completely, as their particles move freely and quickly in all directions.
The three states have key properties:
| State | Particle Arrangement | Volume | Shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solid | Tightly packed | Fixed | Fixed |
| Liquid | Close but moving | Fixed | Takes container shape |
| Gas | Spread out | Fills container | Fills container |
Year 4 pupils in the National Curriculum explore these differences with hands-on investigations to help them compare materials.
Materials change state when you heat or cool them. Melting happens when a solid becomes a liquid, like ice cream on a warm day. Freezing is when a liquid turns into a solid, such as water becoming ice in the freezer.
Evaporation is when a liquid changes to a gas, even when it’s not boiling. Puddles disappear on sunny days because water evaporates into the air. Boiling is fast evaporation that happens throughout a liquid at a certain temperature.
Condensation turns gas back into liquid as it cools. Water droplets form on cold windows or mirrors after a hot shower because of this. These changes happen at different temperatures for different materials, which is why chocolate melts in your hand but metal does not.
LearningMole has free videos showing these changes, making it easier for you to explain these ideas in class.
You can set up simple experiments to see how materials change state. Freeze coloured water in different shaped containers to show that ice keeps the shape of its container. Heat chocolate buttons gently to show melting, then let them cool and watch them freeze.
Recording what they see helps children build scientific enquiry skills. Create tables for pupils to note temperature, time, and changes. Compare how quickly water, cooking oil, and vinegar evaporate by putting the same amount of each in shallow dishes.
Safety is important. Always supervise heating activities and teach children to handle hot materials with care. Older Key Stage 2 pupils can start to understand particle theory, realising that heating makes particles move faster, and cooling slows them down.
Children get to build simple circuits using batteries, wires, bulbs and switches. They also learn the safety rules for working with electrical parts in the classroom.
A circuit needs three things: a power source like a battery, wires to carry the electricity, and something like a bulb or buzzer. The electricity must flow in a complete loop from one end of the battery, through the wires and component, and back to the other end.
When you teach electricity and circuits, start with hands-on work. Let children connect one battery to one bulb using two wires. If the bulb lights up, the circuit is complete. If not, there’s a break in the loop.
Children in Year 4 learn to draw circuits with standard symbols instead of pictures. The battery symbol looks like two lines of different lengths, and the bulb is a circle with an X inside. Using circuit symbols helps children share their designs clearly.
Teachers often add switches to circuits so children can control the electricity. An open switch breaks the circuit and stops the flow. Close the switch, and the bulb lights up again.
Some materials let electricity flow easily, while others block it. Conductors allow electricity through, and insulators stop it.
Metals like copper, aluminium and steel conduct electricity well. That’s why wires are made of metal. Children can test different materials by adding them to a simple circuit and checking if the bulb lights up.
Common conductors:
Common insulators:
Most plastics, wood, rubber and fabric act as insulators. The plastic coating around wires keeps the electricity safely inside the metal. Understanding conductors and insulators helps children see why electrical cables need both materials.
LearningMole has free video tutorials where children test everyday objects and sort them into conductors and insulators. There are also printable worksheets for pupils to predict and record results.
Children must only use batteries for circuit work in primary school, never mains electricity. Batteries provide a safe, low voltage that won’t hurt them when used correctly.
Before starting any experiments, remind your class not to touch plug sockets or electrical appliances with wet hands. They should never take apart batteries or put wires near their eyes or mouth.
Set up a practical activities station for small group circuit building. Give each group a kit with batteries, bulbs, buzzers, switches and crocodile clip wires. Ask them to make a bulb light, then add a switch to control it.
Challenge your pupils to create a quiz game buzzer or a burglar alarm using their circuit skills. These projects connect electricity to real life and keep children interested. Always check batteries for damage or leaks before lessons, and collect all parts afterwards to keep them in good shape.
Light travels in straight lines from its source and bounces off objects, creating reflections and shadows. Sound happens when objects vibrate and travels through materials as waves.
Light comes from objects that make their own energy, like the Sun, bulbs, and candles. The Sun is our main natural light source and gives plants what they need to grow.
Natural light sources include stars, fire, and even some animals like fireflies. Artificial light sources are made by people, like torches, screens, and LED lights. You might try investigating how light travels and how we see with hands-on activities that fit Year 3 and Year 6 curriculum aims.
Some things look bright but don’t make their own light. The Moon glows in the night sky, but it only reflects sunlight. That’s why the Moon’s appearance changes during the month.
Your students can sort different light sources into natural and artificial groups. They might also compare how bright each source is and whether it changes with distance.
Light bounces off smooth surfaces like mirrors. When light hits a mirror, it reflects at the same angle it arrived, so you see your image clearly.
Shadows appear when something blocks light from reaching a surface. The size and shape of a shadow depend on where the light source is and how close the object is to the light. You can help children try activities and worksheets exploring shadows.
Transparent materials like clear glass let most light pass through. Translucent materials, such as frosted glass, let some light through but you can’t see clearly. Opaque things like wood or metal block all light and make the darkest shadows.
LearningMole has free video resources showing reflection experiments using spoons, foil and water.
Sound happens when things vibrate, and those vibrations travel through air, water or solids to your ears. Pluck a guitar string or tap a drum, and the instrument vibrates, pushing air particles to create sound waves.
Pitch tells you how high or low a sound is. Short, thin strings vibrate faster and make higher pitches. Long, thick strings vibrate slower and sound lower. Volume is how loud or quiet a sound is, which depends on the energy in the vibration.
Sound moves through materials at different speeds. It travels fastest through solids like metal or wood, because their particles are close together. Sound moves more slowly through liquids, and slowest through gases like air.
Your class can try investigations into vibrations by putting rice on drums or watching tuning forks in water. These activities help children see that sound needs vibration and moves through all sorts of materials.
Students learn how Earth fits into the universe. They explore its relationship with the Sun and Moon, the planets nearby, and the ancient rocks that reveal stories about our planet’s past.
The Earth, Sun, and Moon make up a system that shapes much of what you notice every day. The Sun sits at the centre as a star. Earth travels around it once every 365 days.
The Moon orbits Earth every 28 days or so. This movement creates the changing phases you see in the night sky.
Day and night happen because Earth spins on its axis every 24 hours. When your part of Earth faces the Sun, you get daytime. As it turns away, night arrives.
This spinning also makes the Sun look like it moves across the sky from east to west.
The Moon doesn’t shine by itself. It reflects sunlight, so you see it glowing at night.
As the Moon circles Earth, you see different parts of its lit surface. That’s why we get phases from new moon to full moon and back again.
BBC Bitesize Earth and space resources explain ideas like gravity, the force that pulls everything towards Earth. Gravity keeps you on the ground, holds the Moon in orbit, and keeps Earth moving around the Sun.
The solar system has eight planets that travel around the Sun in a set order. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are rocky and closest to the Sun.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are gas giants further away. Each planet has something special about it.
Jupiter is the biggest planet and has a giant red spot, which is actually a storm. Saturn stands out with its rings made of ice and rock.
Mars looks red because of iron oxide on its surface.
Between Mars and Jupiter, you’ll find the asteroid belt filled with rocky objects. Beyond Neptune, there are dwarf planets like Pluto and more icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt.
Teachers can use worksheets and interactive tasks to help children understand planet sizes, distances, and features. Many KS2 lesson plans include activities about geocentric and heliocentric theories, showing how our ideas about the solar system have changed.
Rocks form in three main ways, leading to igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic types. Igneous rocks come from cooled magma or lava.
Sedimentary rocks build up from layers of sediment pressed together over time. Metamorphic rocks form when existing rocks change because of heat and pressure.
Fossils are preserved remains or traces of plants and animals from the past. They usually form in sedimentary rocks when organisms get buried quickly and minerals replace their original material over millions of years.
Fossils help scientists figure out what life was like long ago.
Volcano facts link to igneous rock formation. Volcanoes bring molten rock to the surface, and when this lava cools, it forms new igneous rock.
This process has shaped Earth’s surface for billions of years.
The rock cycle shows how rocks keep changing from one type to another. Weather breaks rocks down into sediment. Heat and pressure change them, and melting turns them into magma, which can cool into new rocks.
Evolution and inheritance are a key part of the Year 6 science curriculum. Pupils learn how living things change over time and how they pass characteristics to their offspring.
These ideas build critical thinking skills. Children explore adaptation, natural selection, and genetic inheritance patterns.
Adaptation is about how living things develop features to survive in their environment. You can show pupils how polar bears have thick fur for cold places, while camels store fat in their humps for desert life.
Resources about evolution and inheritance from the Natural History Museum include hands-on activities, like the Snakes and Antlers game. These help children see how the environment affects which species survive.
Variation focuses on differences within the same species. Pupils can spot this by comparing things like eye colour, height, or leaf shapes.
LearningMole has free, curriculum-aligned videos that use clear examples children understand.
Teachers often find sorting activities helpful here. Give pupils pictures of different birds’ beaks and ask them to match each beak to the food it’s best for.
Inheritance is how parents pass characteristics to their young through genes. You can explain that children might have their mother’s eye colour or their father’s hair texture because of inherited traits.
Plants do this too, passing on things like flower colour or leaf shape.
Teaching resources for evolution and inheritance often include family tree activities. Pupils trace features through generations and spot patterns in how traits are passed down.
Fossil evidence helps make these ideas clearer. Show pupils how scientists use fossils to see how species changed over millions of years.
Some characteristics helped animals survive better, so those traits became more common in future generations through natural selection.
Children build scientific enquiry skills by doing hands-on investigations, collecting data, and working together in groups. These abilities are at the heart of working scientifically in KS2 for all science topics.
You need to help pupils identify variables before they start an investigation. Understanding dependent, independent and control variables lets children design fair tests and get reliable results.
Your class should pick the right equipment for measuring. Thermometers, measuring cylinders, and stopwatches all have their uses.
Teaching about accuracy and precision really matters. Children need to know why they should take repeat readings and how to work out averages.
Display packs with ‘I can’ statements give visual reminders of these skills during practical work.
Essential Planning Steps:
Pupils should write down their observations and measurements in tables as they go. This keeps data organised and makes it easier to spot patterns.
Children can present results in different ways, depending on the data. Bar charts help compare categories, while line graphs show changes over time.
Labelled diagrams can explain what happened during an investigation.
You can give younger or less confident learners table templates to help them get started. LearningMole has free video tutorials on making and understanding graphs and charts for science.
Older pupils in Years 5 and 6 should try creating their own tables from scratch.
Group work lets children share ideas and question each other’s thinking during science activities. You might give out roles like equipment manager, recorder, timer, and reporter to make sure everyone gets involved.
Paired investigations can work well. One child takes measurements while the other records, then they swap for repeat readings.
The way you organise your classroom affects collaborative science. Setting up tables as investigation stations encourages groups to move around and talk with each other.
Children learn a lot by watching how other groups tackle the same problem in different ways.
Several well-known platforms offer curriculum-aligned KS2 science materials that save planning time and support good teaching. These sites have video lessons, worksheets, and interactive activities for children aged 7 to 11.
BBC Bitesize has free science content matched to the National Curriculum for each KS2 year group. You’ll find short video clips explaining things like forces, habitats, and the water cycle in simple language.
The site breaks topics into small chunks. Each lesson comes with a video, an activity, and a quiz to check understanding.
Pupils can work through lessons on their own, or you can use them for whole-class teaching.
BBC Bitesize covers all four main strands of primary science: living things, materials, physical processes, and working scientifically. Videos usually last three to five minutes, which helps keep children focused.
You can set specific lessons for homework or remote learning, since children can access everything from home.
Twinkl offers thousands of printable worksheets, PowerPoint slides, and planning documents for KS2 science. Resources match National Curriculum objectives for Years 3 to 6.
You’ll need a subscription for most materials, but some are free. Resources include knowledge organisers with key vocabulary and facts for each topic, which work well for revision or sharing with parents.
The platform has worksheets at different ability levels. You can download editable versions to adjust content for your class.
Many teachers like the time saved on making materials, especially for topics needing detailed diagrams, like electricity or the human circulatory system.
Oak National Academy gives you complete lesson sequences made by subject experts, all free to use. Each lesson includes a video, worksheet, and quiz.
The platform organises content into topic units. You get starter activities for checking prior knowledge and exit quizzes to assess learning.
Videos usually last 10 to 15 minutes, with teacher explanations and on-screen visuals.
Teachers often use these lessons for cover or to help colleagues less confident with science. The resources also work well for classroom or home learning.
You can also check out educational resources on LearningMole. They offer curriculum-aligned video content for primary science, made by an experienced teacher.
Teachers and parents often want to know where to find quality materials and how to get them for free. The right resources can really help children get interested in topics like forces, living things, and electricity.
You can find free printable worksheets on several trusted educational websites. Twinkl offers teacher-made science worksheets ready to print for your classroom or home.
Oak National Academy provides complete teaching resources with worksheets, slides, and quizzes. These follow the National Curriculum and cover all four year groups in Key Stage 2.
LearningMole has free science worksheets that fit with their video content, making it easier to link visual learning with written practice. Teachers who know what works in real classrooms design these worksheets.
You can find plenty of websites that let you download PDF resources for free. HM Tutors shares Test A and Test B Science assessments as PDFs, and they add guidance documents that follow a clear framework.
STEM Learning sorts their primary science collections by topic and year group. These PDFs match up with the English National Curriculum and cover experiment instructions as well as assessment materials.
Some sites offer PDF study guides that explain tricky topics in smaller, easier sections for Years 3 to 6. You can save these files to use offline or share them with other teachers and parents.
BBC Bitesize gives interactive learning resources for ages 7 to 11. They arrange the content by curriculum topic, and you’ll find videos, activities and revision pages.
Education Quizzes turns the National Curriculum into short practice sessions that work well at home or in class. Their quizzes, written by teachers, help children in Years 3 to 6 make sense of science through observation and investigation.
Outstanding Science focuses on primary science schemes that fit the National Curriculum for KS1 and KS2. Everything you need sits in one place, which saves teachers time and hassle.
Yes, several platforms give you downloadable interactive activities that get children learning hands-on. These often include games, quizzes and digital experiments to make science more lively.
EdPlace offers science worksheets online with interactive bits alongside standard written tasks. They cover all Key Stage 2 science topics from Year 3 to Year 6.
Many resources have pupil-facing activities for children to finish on their own or in groups. These suit different ability levels, so you can support every learner in the same lesson.
Good revision worksheets stick to the key topics children need: living things, materials, forces, electricity, light, sound, and Earth and space. Choose resources that split topics into focused questions instead of dumping everything at once.
Websites focused on assessment usually have the best revision materials because they point out common mistakes. These worksheets make it easier to spot gaps before formal tests.
Teacher-made materials often work better than generic worksheets. They bring in real classroom experience, with worked examples and handy hints for tricky ideas.
Simple experiments with clear questions usually work best for Key Stage 2. For example, try testing if water is needed for germination by growing cress seeds with and without water.
Kids often love hands-on investigations into forces. You could set up ramp experiments to see how friction works or test different materials to find out which ones are magnetic.
Chemistry activities like making reversible and irreversible changes can help children understand materials. Mixing bicarbonate of soda and vinegar creates a chemical reaction that produces gas. Children usually find this reaction exciting to watch.
Electricity experiments with simple circuits give pupils a chance to see how switches, bulbs and batteries connect. These practical tasks boost confidence and help children remember key ideas much better than just filling out worksheets.
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