Here at the Rochester Bridge Trust we often tell people about our free education resources because we believe they are a great way to introduce children to engineering in the real world. And because they are free, even if they aren’t for your child or class you’ve nothing to lose by giving them a try!

However we fully admit there’s more to engineering education than our resources can offer. We also appreciate it’s not always easy to find such resources when there are so many other topics and ideas clamouring for your attention.

So we’ve drawn up a couple of shopping lists to help. While these are not exhaustive lists, we believe they are a good start for the development of equipment libraries for schools, youth groups and at home. Each leaves plenty of scope for adding your own ideas to create bespoke collections for your setting.

The kits are similar or the same as equipment we use to run our own hands-on activities for children. These are great for encouraging children to put classroom learning into practice without even realising it.

The books list aims to encourage wider reading among children of all ages. Some of the books directly identify engineering principles, whereas others incorporate the applications of engineering through the narratives or themes of the story.

These lists contain a broad range of resources to give people the opportunity to select the things that are most suited to their audience.

We also appreciate that the costs of all these items soon adds up. To help with this, grants of up to £500 are available from the Trust for the purchase of materials for use in STEM learning activities run by school and community groups.