I am choosing the rocket mouse activity. As a teacher this activity does not require a lot of resourcing. It can be linked to recycling and caring for the environment.
To start the lesson we will read “The way back home” by Oliver Jeffers. I would pose the question how could we travel from space to home. We will thought shower our ideas on the interactive board.
We will then progress onto discussing rockets and spaceships. We will watch a rocket ship launch to spark curiosity.
The children will then be shown the carton and asked how we could make this into a rocket. In groups allow the children to explore and examine how it could be a rocket. Discuss and share ideas. Then introduce the mouse and let the children again experiment with how to move the mouse without touching their hands off the mouse. Allow children again to experiment, investigate and explore. Talk about fair testing and how we can apply it to our experiment.
When the children have had time to investigate, I would move to the P.E. hall where the children have space to test their predictions and observe what is happening when they apply different types of forces to the carton. What happens the mouse
We will bring a meter stick and observe distance the mouse moves before falling.
Next steps I would ask the children to think about sports that involve similar actions.