Activity: Design and make a rocket
Curious minds have some great ideas. These are the ideas I have in mind for a first class.
Trigger: What are rockets? How do they work? What are they used for? Show class a video of a NASA rocket launch. Whole class discussion on the launch of the rocket into space.
Investigation: which item can fly the furthest in the air. Children in groups select items to test eg. foam javelins, balloons, paper etc. After the children have made predictions and given reasons to support their predictions we will discuss how we will make it a fair test.
Plan: After the investigation, the children in groups will start to plan their own rocket. Using different materials eg. milk carton, bottle or some of the previous tested materials, children will sketch their rocket with as many labels as possible.
Make- the children make their rockets in groups according to their plan.
Evaluate – the children test their rockets and evaluate what worked well? What can we improve? What did we see in another rocket that we also worked well?