National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh1st Sep-31st DecAll dayFree
Maths is all around us - in nature, wildlife, natural forces, the stars, and so much more. Take a walk around the National Museum of Scotland's Natural World galleries and see how much wild maths you can spot in the museum’s collections!
Download your free copy of the trail below. If you want to avoid printing and access the trail on your mobile device, just take along a notebook and pencil for any questions that require writing down answers. There are three questions that involve drawing, but you can sketch them out in your notebook instead.
The trail is aimed at primary school aged children, but younger children can also enjoy it in a mixed group, with different ages working together.
The trail would also be suitable to use during a self-led school visit.
The trail focuses on the museum's three Natural World galleries, which are all in a stack across Level 1, Level 3 and Level 5 at the east end of the Grand Gallery, coloured light green on the museum map. If you get stuck, we have marked below where in each gallery the questions in the trail relate to.
We've pulled together all our seasonal resources from the last three years, and thrown in a few new ones too, so that you can create your own Christmas Holiday Countdown depending on age, ability and preferences. With games, puzzles, art and craft activities to choose from, as well as our interactive puzzle mystery story.
To celebrate Book Week Scotland, we are delighted to announce the finalists and winners of our Maths Tales 2025 story-writing competition, run in partnership with Read Write Count with The First Minister.
