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Wow Ciara, there are some great ideas there. I’ll definitely try out that lovely book with my class next year. I also love the idea of the astronaut training course.
I would definitely try making a rocket that launches with my class. I was recently at a workshop where we made these rockets and the teachers really enjoyed launching them and trying to make sure we were all starting at the point to see who could launch their rocket the furthest and which angle was the best to get the rocket to travel higher or further. I think that young children would really enjoy this activity. We were discussing the activity with a group of teachers and we decided that it would be a lovely team-based exercise for an older class to do with a younger class. We could have mixed groups with some younger and some older children working together.
Preparation for this activity is important as there needs to be enough foam tubing for the number of rockets being made.
Materials needed:
Foam tubing
Strong tape (preferably easy tear like gorilla duct tape)
Elastic bands
Strong card
Method:
Cut four slits in bottom of the foam tube. Cut out two triangles of equal size and slot them together to make an x shape. Slot these triangles into the foam slits so that your rocket stands up. Attach an elastic band to the top of the foam rocket using strong tape. Use a long thin stick to launch the rocket.
I think this is a wonderful activity for children and I will definitely do it with my class this year. I have often made junk rockets with my class out of recycled items but we have never tried to launch them. I like the scientific element to these rockets and feel they create such a rich learning experience for the children.
I would also integrate other subjects into the lesson. I would introduce some rocket themed picture books like “Whatever Next” and “Roaring Rockets”. I would encourage the children to think about things they could create at home – e.g. forts, dens, rockets etc. We would look at rhyming words in the books. In PE we would do some athletics and throw some foam javelins, experimenting with throwing them in different ways to see which way would send them further. We could also compare the foam javelins to our rockets. I would also do a wax resist art lesson with the children where they could draw their own rocket to create a space display in our class. I would do all these lessons while exploring the theme of space in Aistear.I agree, Aoife, that sorting activities are a great learning opportunity for young children. This is one I will definitely be doing also.
I am really impressed with the ESERO lessons – Where do you live?, Animals in the Cold, What clothes to wear, and Hot and Cold. I feel these would be really interesting and valuable lessons to teach next year. In our Aistear we always do the topic of homes and I now think that I will introduce animal homes and environments into this Aistear topic next year. We always talk about different houses and where people live but I have never come across this lovely lesson where the children can cut out the model houses and make a little village. This would provide a lovely learning opportunity for the children and encourage them to think about different types of homes.
The lesson about animals in the cold is very interesting and I would love to experiment with the Vaseline on the children’s hands to demonstrate the greasy layer that penguins and polar bears have to keep them warm.
What clothes to wear is a lovely simple activity that children would love to do and would be simple to set up in the classroom. Letting children look at real clothes and decide what weather they would suit is so practical and would be an enjoyable task for them to do in school.
Hot and Cold is another very simple lesson but like all these lessons, it is well structured and easy to do with a class of very young children.
These are very simple and easy-to-follow lessons that are engaging for children. I will definitely be introducing them to the other teachers in my school next year.
In terms of STEM and SSE, I feel that it is our duty to start teaching children from the start about sustainability and protecting our environment. I feel we should all have some SSE aims to teach the children to become more aware of the world and how to protect at an age-appropriate level.I love the ideas here, especially for slightly older children. It’s great to introduce the children to the conditions necessary for life to survive and would be nice to continue on from there and talk about global warming and protecting our planet.
This is a topic that I really enjoy teaching to young children. I would start by making a little library of all the space and alien related books for the children to browse through and I would read one to them daily. Below is a list of some of the books I would use:
Mousetronaut
Aliens love Underpants
Q Pootle 5
Roaring Rockets
Here come the Aliens
I would get the children to brainstorm ideas about how they would like their monster to look. We would draw their monsters first and maybe do a wax resist picture. Then I would let the children make a model of their alien using clay.
We would use adjectives to describe our aliens to each other and list all the characteristics of the aliens on a chart. The children could label their alien depending on their level of ability.
I would also integrate some maths by counting eyes, legs and arms of our collective group of aliens. Another nice idea would be to create a graph e.g. how many people have aliens with 1 eye, 2 eyes, 3 eyes etc. We could do some graph reading from the results of this.
I would ask the children to look at the planets in the solar system and decide which planet their alien may have come from and why.I would play a space game in PE where the children could move to music like aliens and when the music stops, go to a “planet” in a group of e.g. 3 or 4
I agree with you that the sun and shadows is a great lesson for children. It’s such an organic experimental lesson where the children can naturally engage their curiosity and work at their own level of comprehension.
I chose the spherical earth as a basis for teaching a lesson to young children. I really like the ideas in the module. Children are really interested in the North Pole and South Pole and there is always huge enthusiasm for lessons on polar bears and penguins. I love the idea of beginning the lesson with a discussion around why the penguins do not fall off the South Pole and the polar bears do not fall off the North Pole. I also love the Earth mosaic. After discussion about the earth’s layers and what lies beneath the sea, this would be a lovely exercise to let the children showcase what they understand of what is above the earth and what lies beneath. The young children that I teach would really enjoy putting their section of the earth together with others to form a full circle and to show the spherical shape of the earth, while still having the opportunity to do their own thing and have their own unique part. As a class I would probably make a papier mache earth as well to further their understanding of the concept.
As an infant teacher also I really like your ideas for teaching stars Eleanor. It’s a topic that children love and the integration into so many other subjects is excellent.
An inquiry based activity that I have enjoyed doing with my class in the past is making a rainbow and showing the distribution of colours within the rainbow.
Materials:
coffee filter paper
water-based markers
water spray bottle
Method:
The children open up the coffee filter paper and lay it out flat. It naturally makes a butterfly shape so I usually add a pipe cleaner down the middle as the butterfly’s body at the end. I then encourage the children to use different coloured markers to create a pattern on the filter paper. When they are finished we spray water all over the filter paper butterfly with the spray bottle. I then hang the filter paper up and we watch as the colours begin to separate and bleed into each other to create a beautiful butterfly pattern. Young children are always intrigued with this process and the end result is always stunning. They particularly like to see the black separating into all the colours of the rainbow.
This sounds like such a great learning activity. The scope for inquiry based learning and quality discussion is amazing here. As a teacher in a junior school I think this is just the kind of topic that I would like to introduce with my class to discover their existing knowledge of space and their ability to think creatively.
