STEM Sisters kicks off online on March 15

While homeschooling is a hit and miss experience - as any parent will attest - home learning is a rather more fun prospect, especially when that learning experience involves musical theatre.

Which is why we're getting excited about STEM Sisters, a new online musical show designed for primary age kids and their families, which focuses on female scientific pioneers like Mae Jemison, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie and others.

Written by Rachel Barnett-Jones and composed by Jenny Gould, STEM Sisters follows a young girl called Jina, who gets lost in a forest and is helped by key figures in science and maths, learning about their experiments, inventions and achievements on her journey.

The film, from HMDT (twice winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Education and the 2020 Excellence in Musical Theatre Award), uses a variety of puppetry techniques, music and theatre to bring Jina's story to life - and to introduce these incredible female scientists to a new generation.

Ada Lovelace's coding and algorithms become accessible via rap, while a shadow puppet quartet of astronomers Hypatia, Caroline Herschel, Mae Jemison and Wang Zhenyi takes us to the skies. STEM Sisters also introduces children to prolific figures like Hedy Lemarr, Elsie Widdowson, Dorothy Hodgkin, Mary Anning, Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, Rosalind Franklin, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Maria Sibylla Merian.

The performance is suggested for ages 8-12, and runs on demand online for 55 minutes without an interval.