Wildlife charity WWT, which runs London Wetland Centre in Barnes, launches its new online ‘wild’ home learning hub to help hard-pressed parents teach their primary school-aged children key parts of the science curriculum.
New resources, covering different conservation science themes, will be released weekly on a Monday morning during the lockdown.
WWT has 70 years’ experience in teaching school groups and its experts have tailored their wealth of curriculum-linked learning resources for use at home. Mini-lesson plans have been adapted for parents, and divided up into bite-sized chunks, including an outdoors element. Separate plans have been created for five to seven and seven to eleven-year-olds.
WWT is sharing this expertise with families to help educate their young children in the building blocks of conservation science.
Mark Stead, National Learning Manager from WWT, said:
“Under normal circumstances during the summer term, thousands of primary pupils would enjoy a school trip to one of our wetland centres, including WWT London, each of them leaving as a budding David Attenborough.
“And after decades of doing this, we’re sitting on a wealth of learning resources. So we thought, what better way to help out than to tailor them especially for parents at home, so you can easily keep your mini-conservationists up to speed with their curriculum.
“We’re releasing a new lesson each Monday. Just like Joe Wicks, but with science… and we promise you won’t pull a hamstring or get out of breath.”
These weekly lessons cover themes that WWT London addresses daily such as climate change, migration, wildlife identification, and habitats. Parents can click on the hub for a full theme list. The lessons are supported by visual resources, ‘how to make’ videos and fun quizzes.
WWT’s ‘wild’ home learning hub is as fun as it is educational. It champions nurturing an emotional connection among children with the natural world, as well as curriculum-based learning. WWT hopes this will inspire the next generation to protect nature, something which society, during lockdown, is beginning to value more.
As well as the weekly ‘mini-lesson’ content, the hub features a range of simple, ‘always available’ fun family activities such as spotter guides, colouring-in sheets, and ‘how to build’ kit.
Click on wwt.org.uk/homelearning to access the hub. Also, check out #wwthomelearning
