How Washington Wetland Centre is helping parents become science teachers during lockdown

WWT, which runs Washington Wetland Centre, has launched its new online learning hub to help hard-pressed parents teach their primary school aged children key parts of the science curriculum.

New resources covering conservation science themes will be released weekly on Monday mornings and will cover a number of topics, including climate change, migration, wildlife identification and habitats.

The lessons will be supported by visual resources, ‘how to make’ videos and fun quizzes for 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, each of them leaving as a budding David Attenborough.

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.”

Mini lesson plans have been adapted for parents, and divided up into bite-sized chunks, including an outdoors element and separate plans have been created for five to seven and seven to 11 year olds.

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.

To learn more, visit https://www.wwt.org.uk/discover-wetlands/home-learning-and-family-fun

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