From an early age I collected "rubbish". I mean, all the containers destined for the bin, or ones my mum didn't want anymore. I would repurpose them into all sorts of handy contraptions such as a mini pond for my toy frog, made from a small box and aluminium pie tin, to a cereal box filing system for all my comics. 

But the jar was a marvellous container. It looked exactly like a scientific beaker from a lab. It was transparent. It was strong. And it had a lid. I could mix anything in it, grow plants in it, or view various crawly specimens in it closely...and long enough to doodle it and release it back into the garden. 

However, it wasn't until I started running science clubs as an adult that I thought about jars again.

Something that frustrated me growing up was how many of the activity books out there required me to have items that were simply not possible for a seven-year-old to obtain. Not only that, but items I would never find in the house. If your parents don't drink wine, where do you find corks? If you're a vegetarian, where do you find beef stock cubes? And if it's a particular shape of plastic package (e.g. washing up liquid bottles, or crisp tubes), should children be expected to pester their parents to buy the item just for the packaging? The interesting thing about diversity and inclusion is that to truly include everyone (even when developing practical resources), we actually need to know about people, and not assume that they're all like us and have access to the same materials, equipment and ingredients.

The environmental angle is often used with many science activity resources, as in, "here’s a great way to use your waste". For me, this is something I had been doing for years by collecting containers to use in science clubs, or school and community outreach, and rinsing them all out to be re-used next time. If containers broke I recycled the pieces. As children in science clubs began asking to take their "makes" home, I gave up my containers to them. But when they turned up the next week saying, "My mum/dad thought it was rubbish so they threw it in the bin," it made me wonder about the environmental repercussions of others disposing what I had given them. This made me feel a sense of responsibility to make sure whatever I was supplying in clubs was recyclable, compostable or even edible!

Back to the jar. Jars are easily obtainable thanks to the number of edibles we purchase in them: pickles, jams, chutneys, sauces and so on. Could we use something as ubiquitous as the common jar to carry out curriculum-linked science activities, while removing all single-use plastic and being as environmentally-friendly and zero-waste as possible? Why yes! So I wrote a book about it: Utterly Jarvellous: 50 Primary Science Activities You Can Do In A Jar, published by Bloomsbury Education.

Utterly Jarvellous is about doing science activities using a jar, its lid and all kinds of items easily found in the classroom, house or outdoors (such as string, paperclips, leaves and fruit peel). Obviously inclusion was huge for me: can everyone truly get hold of all the items needed to do these activities? And if not, what are the alternatives? Some activities are adaptations of existing ones, while others are brand new. Jar lids come in all shapes and sizes too and provide useful “dishes” for leaving reactions happening on the side. Each activity in the book comes with teaching notes and a worksheet for children. Some are short filler-activities and others are longer, more investigative ones, so educators can use the book during lessons or as homework tasks.

A practical activity resource that doesn't rely on any single-use-plastic such as balloons, straws, or non-environmentally-friendly materials (e.g. sticky tape and glue) and looking at what packaging the ingredients or materials come in, has not been available until now. Even the food ingredients used can be ones that have gone off, lurking in the back of cupboards, so as to not encourage food waste.

To the children's delight, even with the limited number of materials, the reactions blow their minds! Science doesn't need to be about massive explosions with complicated equipment and toxic chemicals...one activity is literally a jar of water...and that's it. But it leaves the whole class in awe. Balloons may be fun for learning about static electricity, but making an electroscope from a jar and aluminium foil is hugely exciting. Who needs gold leaf? Not to mention the fact we're saving the seas from more deadly balloon-waste. Copper-plating paperclips has had children staring intently as the reaction happens right before their eyes! Some "magic trick" activities have been included too as they make great demos for classes to watch and wonder "how did that happen?" Well, it's not magic, it's science. Which ends up as playground gossip and children testing it out on family members at home!

There are actually more than 50 activities if you look carefully and they're not just for Key Stage 2. There is a notion that by using simple materials that the science is simple or worse yet, dumbed down. Low tech is appealing to all as participants can see it as accessible and do-able in the home. The materials may be simple, but the science isn’t. Utterly Jarvellous is a resource for teachers and home educators covering much more in-depth science (some of it is actually A-level and beyond) but described in a way that's interesting to children, thereby encouraging a love for learning and discovery. 

Utterly Jarvellous can help educators to run cost-effective after-school or lunchtime science clubs too. Everything is easy to prepare and set up, and children can be invited to bring in their own empty jars. While the basic outline of each activity is given, there are plenty of opportunities for children to "try it and see". This allows us as educators to nurture the curiosity of future scientists and them wanting to investigate further. 

Although curriculum-linked, Utterly Jarvellous has been used by many out-of-school groups, from science clubs to refugee groups at community gardens, and at adventure playgrounds to online Brownie groups, with everyone saying how much they love the activities. There really is something in it for everyone. Not one child has broken a jar either...but one adult has!

Popular activities include the wormeries, ‘Go with The Flow’ flowers (unfurling paper flowers thanks to capillary action) and ‘Floatato’ (floating potato pieces thanks to density). These also seemed to be the easiest activities for children to do with their parents in their own time (releasing a book during a lockdown certainly helped with home education efforts). The inventiveness and creativity of young people is fascinating to see. The Brownies declared their Utterly Jarvellous session as one of the BEST ever, and came up with a fabulous idea for science-themed birthday parties where everyone gets their own paper flower to decorate and watch bloom, as well as an idea to use the constellation night-light activities for when they're next out camping. A group of boys in one of my science clubs turned a surface tension activity (water droplets on a one pence coin) into a Jenga-like game. These activities can inspire children to create their own experiments and games using their imagination. This playful learning only adds to the understanding that science is a lot about the "what ifs". 

We've had interesting conversations on social media too such as the best ways to remove stubborn labels from jars, how to discuss global warming and climate change through some of the activities and making household eco-friendly cleaning products. We also ran a delicious competition with Tiptree, where two lucky teachers won a class-set of teeny jam jars, as the jar size is perfect for young children's hands, enabling them to try out some Utterly Jarvellous activities!

This book shows us that children (and schools) everywhere can do science and be environmentally-friendly at the same time! Go on, have a go...the world is your jam jar!