Key Stage 2 · Year 3 · ages 7 or 8
Year 3 science: what your child learns
Year 3 science covers flowering plants, nutrition and skeletons, rocks and fossils, light and shadows, and forces and magnets. Children find out how water travels up a stem, how flowers lead to seeds, and why bodies need the right food, bones and muscles. They also learn how fossils form, why shadows change size, and how two magnets attract or repel depending on which poles face each other.
Guides for parents
Year 3 science
Nutrition, skeletons and muscles
What Year 3 children learn about the food animals and humans need, and how skeletons and muscles support, protect and move the body, with a worked example.
Year 3 science
Forces, friction and magnets
What Year 3 children learn about friction on different surfaces, contact and non-contact forces, magnetic materials and poles, with a worked example and home ideas.
Year 3 science
Light, reflection and shadows
What Year 3 children learn about how we see, reflection, protecting eyes from the sun, how shadows form and how their size changes, with a worked example.
Year 3 science
Parts of plants and life cycles
What Year 3 children learn about roots, stems, leaves and flowers, what plants need, how water travels up a stem, pollination and seed dispersal, with home ideas.
Year 3 science
Rocks, fossils and soils
What Year 3 children learn about grouping rocks by their properties, how fossils form and what soil is made of, with a worked example of testing rocks and ideas for home.
Everything in the Year 3 science curriculum
The National Curriculum topics for Year 3, in the order the National Curriculum lists them.