Rockets
1. Discussion about travel to Space. Talk about what it would be like to be an astronaut, what do they wear and why, what do spaceships look like, how would you carry out daily tasks while travelling in space? Look at pictures on Google of Space Shuttle, Space X etc
2. Watch Astronaut Chris Hadfield carrying out daily tasks while travelling in Space-1. Washing teeth – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bCoGC532p8 2. Sleeping – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyFYgeE32f0 3. Eating https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZx0RIV0wss
3. Books- The First Hippo on the Moon, The Darkest Dark, The Sea of Tranquillity.
4. I teach infants so I think the Rocket Mouse experiment would be most suitable for that age group. I would read a book such as The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers to begin. I would also show a video of a rocket launch. These triggers would prompt discussions about rockets… What do they look like, How do they move, What shape are they, How do they go? How do they come down? etc.
5. I would divide the children into groups and get them to make a Rocket Mouse using the template given. I would give the children colours to decorate.
6. After the rockets are made we can conduct our experiment. Before launching their rockets I would ask the children to think about how it will behave in the air. I liked the idea of using the tomato ketchup bottle to show how squeezing the bottle creates pressure. I would explain to the children that the container used as the rocket launcher has air inside it. When you compress this air it pushes back and the pressure inside increases and sends the rocket mouse flying high into the air. There are also two other forces acting on the rocket: air resistance and gravity. Air resistance always pushes in the opposite direction to the rocket’s movement and gravity always pulls downwards. I would ask the children to predict what they think is going to happen their own rocket mouse. I will encourage them to think about how far will it go and what changes they can make to increase/ decrease the distance travelled. I would get the children to try different containers and smaller/ larger mice to see if there are changes to how far the rocket mouse travels.