How caves form, what lives in them, and why people painted on their walls forty thousand years ago - a caves topic for KS1 and KS2 that lands on rocks, fossils and the Stone Age.

Limestone dissolved by rainwater, stalactites at a centimetre a century, blind fish, bats in the dark zone, and a cave painting to make with the three colours the originals used.

What children will explore

• How caves form - rainwater and carbon dioxide make a weak acid that dissolves limestone
• Formations - a four-stage stalactite diagram, and sorting ten formations by where they grow
• Cave zones - entrance, twilight and dark, and which creature lives in each
• Adaptation - blind cave fish, glow worms, the fasting olm, and bat echolocation
• Cave art - forty thousand years old, three materials, and one to make
• Fossils - why there are sea creatures in the walls of a cave

What’s inside - 30 pages

• Five theme spotlight pages, each with a try-this-at-home activity
• Stalactite formation diagram in four stages
• Sort ten formations into ceiling or floor, with two deliberate trick answers
• Cave zone ecosystem page and six creature adaptation cards
• Shadow matching with deliberately similar silhouettes
• Pictograph code breaker using cave-art symbols, then write your own
• Underground navigation map with six chambers, compass only
• Mistake inspector with six errors that each test a fact from the pack
• Two truths and a fib, four sets, then children write their own
• Make a cave painting on a textured wall, in three colours
• Build a cave scene from eight cut-outs
• Ten-challenge cave safari that works without a cave
• I spy, counting, word tracing, reading, writing and colouring
• Certificate

Why teachers and parents love this pack

• Covers the Year 3 rocks and fossils objectives inside a topic children want
• Cave painting gives a Stone Age unit its most memorable lesson
• Blind cave fish make adaptation concrete rather than abstract
• The safari works at home: grow a stalactite in a jar, find limescale on a tap, make echoes in a stairwell
• Children write their own fib and their own code, rather than only solving

Instant PDF download, 30 pages. US Letter size - on A4, print at fit to page.