PPE:Mr Beetle's Watery Adventure

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Mr Beetle's Watery Adventure is a show aimed at primary age pupils in Key Stage 2 (age 7 - 11).It focuses on the subject of water but engages the pupils through the excitement of listening to a story-telling, ukele-playing, song-singing Mr Beetle. Mr Beetle is actually Barry Patterson, an experienced children's educator who dresses up as a highly convincing beetle and engages pupils though stories, songs, scientific demonstrations and lots of audience participation.The unique element of this project is that it works through the medium of storytelling - rare in the world of science - and invites the children to imagine what it is like to live in a watery world, rather than simply demonstrating properties of water.Emphasis is on how and why we understand water the way we do and how we find out new facts by research and that there is still much to be discovered about the world. This idea is rare for youngsters as they are usually required to 'discover' what their teachers already know.To help teachers in their work we will also produce a teaching resource pack which teachers can use to help pupils consolidate what they have learnt through the show. Feedback from teachers indicates that such a resource would be of considerable value to them.Thus this application is for Progress and Development funding for the highly successful project Mr Beetle's Watery Adventure, funded by an EPSRC PPE award through which the original show was created and went on to visit 25 primary schools over 9 months at no cost to the schools. This project now seeks to allow even more children to benefit from this enhancement to their science experience regardless of the financial position of the school.