Little Scientists is an exploration and play based three-year program that engages young learners in the wonderment of the world around them. Across three years, learners engage playfully with scientific knowledge, skills, values and behaviours through ninety experiential fun-filled lessons. Each year of the program is comprised of two, fifteen-lesson mini-programs, effectively breaking Little Scientists into a six-stage endeavour.

Building on the natural curiosity of young learners and their need to make sense of the world the program content examines six key domains of scientific knowledge; life or biological science, the nature of matter or chemical science, the physical sciences of energy and motion, earth science, space science, and the nature and practice of scientific inquiry. Exploring these domains requires a focus on process, manipulation, and critical and creative thinking and there are twenty-six skills in these areas that are both explicitly embedded and implicitly accessible within the program.

Scaffolding learning is supported through the mini-program lessons being grouped in topic based collections and the spiral sequencing with respect to learning opportunities in both thematic areas of scientific knowledge and the skill-based practices of scientific inquiry. Throughout the program, the practical nature and engaging design affords significant opportunity for questions and reflection and this dialogic focus serves to underpin exploration and learning with respect to the use and influence of science in our world. Furthermore, as part of the foundations for future scientific understanding combined with the development of critical skills and attitudes for learning, the Little Scientists program facilitates a rich context for young learners in their learning journey through individual and group pursuits, with motor control through instruments and models, in scientific literacy through language, and in early numeracy with connections to emerging mathematical understanding.