Hi, I’m Ellen. I’m going to be teaching Senior Infants in September. My favourite space fact is that the sun is actually a star. I’m looking forward to learning some new facts here 🙂
Frances from Blackrock Castle came to my school this term and ran through a few experiments with us. One of which was the forces. I thought the lessons for infants in particular were very good and I am planning to try them myself this year. We used cars and also the kits with the matching pictures and objects (marbles, hair clips, elastic bands etc). We started by trying to make the cars move in as many different ways as possible. This prompted a lot of discussion on what was actually moving the car, for example blowing on it, tilting the surface to create a ramp etc. This was also useful for using the language of push and pull to clarify understanding of the two words.
This was followed on by a lesson using the objects. We were able to explore dropping the objects investigating where they land, furthering this to try dropping 2 together to see do they fall at the same speed etc. Again this prompted a lot of discussion and comparison between the various objects. I can see in the classroom how this could then lead to a discussion on how all the objects fell down to the ground, and what gravity is.