Activity Set – Rockets – Over the course of a week the children could engage in more than one activity and draw conclusions and observations around different activities and which one was best / why? etc.
A great stimulus would be to use the picture book ‘ Aliens in underpants save the world’. This would engage the children and open up discussion, question and answering around prior knowledge and ideas on space.
Focusing in on rockets and space travel- show the class some real life footage of rockets being launched (incorporate old footage and recent) this incorporates history (then and now- similarities and differences in footage (black and white) and design of rockets -size, appearance etc.)
Activity – draw and design your own rocket
Activity – mouse rocket – investigate/ predict/ discuss results/ change the size of the bottle/rocket and see what happens?
Activity – Balloon rocket – marvin and milo- investigate predict and discuss results
Compare and contrast between the mouse and balloon rocket results – discuss results and possible reasons?
Extension – fizzy rocket experiment – looking at the chemical reaction
This theme of rockets can also feed across other subjects – art junk art rockets/ english- rocket acrostic poems/ shape poems Maths – 2d shapes- making rockets from 2d shapes Geography- mapping / satellite imagery google earth stellium online etc.
So many great opportunities to link across a very engaging theme.