Year of the Horse

This walking horse is a brilliant low-cost science activity that requires only paper, scissors and something to make a ramp from. The horses can be a bit fiddly at first, but they are worth the effort.

You'll need

1. Paper
2. Scissors
3. A ramp

Instructions

Cut around each rectangle horse shape.

Cut the small triangles from the bottom of each leg, and then cut up the legs, stopping at the middle section.

Bend the four legs down and fold the tail upwards.

Fold up the head and again at the top to make a head. 

Set up a ramp from a stack of books and thick cardboard, and place the horse at the top.

If it doesn't move, gently push the legs until it starts walking.

Year of the Goat

Goats are well known for their climbing and balancing skills. Several features help them achieve their gravity defying skills.

1. Goats have special hooves that work like a clever climbing shoe. Their hooves have a hard outer wall that can dig into rock cracks and a soft, rubbery pad in the middle that can adapt to the ground's contours.
2. Cloven hooves (two toes) allow goats to pinch the ground when climbing and to spread their toes wide to distribute weight evenly.
3. Goats have a low centre of gravity, with most of their weight concentrated low to the ground, and a centre of mass shifted towards their front legs, giving them a forward lean that helps prevent backwards fall when climbing.
4. Goats have large, thick necks and strong shoulder muscles that help them pull their bodies upward when climbing.
5. They have Dewclaws - small, sharp nubs that act like a brake if the goat starts to slide. They can dig into a rock to help stop or slow a fall.
6. Goats have a great sense of where their limbs are without having to look at them. This is called proprioception.
7. They keep three limbs in contact with the rock they are climbing while the fourth searches for the next stable spot.

Make a balancing goat

You'll need

1. A bottle with a lid
2. 5 wooden skewers
3. 4 Marshmallows or play dough
4. A Carrot

Instructions

Cut a small piece of carrot and insert a wooden skewer approximately 2 inches long into the bottom. Most of the skewer should be outside the carrot.

Place the skewer on the top of the bottle, it will fall over.

Push the pointed end of two skewers into opposite sides of the carrot, and push a marshmallow onto the end of both.

Place the carrot onto the bottle lid. It should now balance!

Add two more marshmallow skewers to the carrot and see if it still balances.

Experiment by moving the marshmallows up and down the skewers.

Balance a Goat Template

Balancing Monkey STEM Challenge

This balancing monkey challenge is great for learning about Centre of Mass. For a monkey to balance on a tree branch, its Centre of Mass needs to be under the branch. Monkeys use their tails to help them balance in the trees. Adjusting the position of their tails helps monkeys shift their centre of mass, making it easier to balance as they swing through the trees.

You'll need

1. Cardstock
2. Scissors
3. Template
4. Paperclips or small coins

Instructions

Cut out the monkey shape from the template below (or draw your own) and try to balance it on your finger. The monkey will fall over.

Place 2 paperclips or a coin on the bottom of the arms and try again. The monkey should balance.

Add an extra paperclip and watch what happens.

Extension challenge: try other small objects instead of paperclips. A small coin or Play-Doh also works well.

Balancing Monkey Template

Paper Cup Rooster

You’ll need

1. Ribbon
2. A plastic or paper cup
3. Paperclip
4. Water
5. Thick tissue or a paper towel
6. Pencil

Instructions

Thread the ribbon through the hole and tie a small knot at the end. The ribbon should be about 30 cm longer than the end of the cup.

Attach the paperclip to the ribbon so it rests on the bottom of the cup.

Wet a small paper towel.

Fold the paper towel around the ribbon and pull it down!

Why does it make a noise?

The cup acts like a soundboard. Try rubbing the paper towel down the ribbon without the cup attached. There's no noise. The cup amplifies the vibrations created by the movement of the paper towel down the ribbon, making a louder noise than you’d get without the cup.

Year of the Pig

Pigs are smart, have great long-term memories, can eat almost anything, and are surprisingly athletic thanks to lots of clever adaptations! In this activity, you’re going to learn about the incredible features of pigs that make them special.

Not just messy mud

Pigs roll in mud to cool themselves. Mud dries and holds onto the water, which then evaporates slowly, providing a long lasting cooling effect for the pig.

Super Snout Skills

Pigs have an excellent sense of smell that allows them to detect food buried in the ground!

Pig snouts are prehensile (they can move and feel), allowing them to move objects out of the way with their noses!

Warm Blubber

Pigs have a layer of subcutaneous fat that helps keep them warm because they don’t have much fur.

Marvellous Memory

Pigs have a good long-term memory. They can remember where food is hidden months later!

Big Lungs

Pigs have very large lungs for their body size, allowing them to move quickly for short periods of time.

Ultimate Eaters

Pigs can eat roots, fruit, grains, vegetables, dairy, and eggs. They are omnivorous foragers with a tough digestive system.

Cloven Hooves

Pigs have cloven hooves, meaning they have two toes split down the middle instead of a single solid hoof. When walking in soft mud, pigs can split their toes, which increases the surface area of their hooves, spreading the pig's weight over a larger area and helping it avoid sinking in wet mud.

Year of the Rat

Rats are agile, social and smart animals with a great memory and amazing vibration sensing abilities.

In this activity, we're going to pretend to be rats and identify objects without using our eyes.

Rats rely more on their whiskers than their eyes and use them to identify the shape, texture and location of objects in the dark.

What is a whisker?

A whisker is more than just a hair. It grows from a follicle that is sealed by a capsule of blood, called a blood sinus. When a whisker touches something, it bends and pushes against the sinus, which triggers nerves that send a message to the brain. The rat uses information from its whiskers to identify and locate objects.

What is it? Objects in the dark challenge

The idea behind this activity is to use a pipe cleaner (a pretend whisker) to identify objects you can't see in a box.

Whiskers are so sensitive that they can detect very small changes in air currents and surface textures.

You'll need

1. A sealed box with a hole in the side.
2. Small objects with distinctive features, for example, a cup with a handle, a hairbrush
3. A pipe cleaner or toothbrush

Instructions

Try to identify the different objects in the box using only a pipe cleaner or a toothbrush.

Rat Super Sleuth Worksheet

Tiger Food Chains

Tigers are Apex Predators, which means they are at the top of the food chain. There are 6 subspecies of tiger, based on where they live and slightly different characteristics. The most common type of tiger is the Bengal Tiger, which makes up about half of all wild tigers.

Imagine what would happen if you removed the tigers from the chain. The population of primary consumers would increase, leading them to eat more plants and potentially destabilising the ecosystem.

Print the sheet below and cut out the images. Use them to create a food chain for tigers living in the glasslands and another for tigers living in the wetlands.