Activity- Rockets for a Junior Infant class. This is the year group I will have next year so this lesson will be aimed at this age group.
- Cross Curricular links – PE: Sport darts/archery/Stability/things that fly through the air etc
- Art – Construction
- History – sequencing
- English – Book ‘Rocket the Space Giraffe’
- Math – measuring distance and how far the rocket mouse will travel.
- Aistear – creating rocket mice using the templates provided – cone shaped.
Trigger – I’m Building a Rocket by Kenn Nesbitt poem.
The teacher will build a sense of wonder for the child by posing a starter question – How might changing the force of the rocket make it go further/higher/slower? We will then explore how we might make a rocket go further by conducting an investigation which in this case would be by using different sized bottles. The children will have sourced varying bottles from home and they will use these when launching the mouse they made earlier. Questions asked during the investigation will include: What makes your rocket fly? What makes it come down again? How do you think a real rocket works?
Sharing/Data- the children will discuss distances measured, materials used and how force affects distance. The children will put a happy face on the board under either the big or small bottle to indicate which one made the mouse go furthest. We will then compare results.