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Activity set: Space and Aliens for senior infants.
Beginning of lesson: Story: The Smeds and the Smoos. Children will be encouraged to pick out the funny vocabulary they hear throughout the story such as: loobular lake, humplety hill, wurpular wood and jerberry coot. The children can then make up their own vocabulary to suit a planet of their choice. All planets will be discussed with a short fact about each one given.
Middle of lesson: Children can design their own symmetrical paper cut aliens. Using a sheet of paper folded in half with a pencil they can design one half of their alien and then cut along this line. Children can then decorate their aliens using crayons, markers, stickers, wiggly eyes, pom poms, feathers, beads and paint.
End of lesson: Children will listen to ‘The Planet Song’ and watch the video on Youtube. Children can then go over to the ‘Space Station’ Aistear area in the classroom in small groups and enjoy seeing what it would be like being an astronaut.
Thanks for this book recommendation. I have read a few of Oliver Jeffers books but not this one. I’ll be adding it to my collection this year.
The lesson I would choose to teach is The Sun and Shadows with senior infants.
We would begin by having a class discussion about how shadows are made. We would discuss the sun and how light travels in straight lines and what happens when an object gets in the way of the sun shining. I would then turn out the lights in the classroom and shine a bright light in front of the interactive white board. I would then invite children to come up and see what shape of shadows they can make using their bodies. Next I would read Hand shadows by Usborne to the class and I would demonstrate different animal shadows that can be formed using our hands such as a bird, a rabbit or a frog. I would invite the children to take turns trying these out. We would then read the book Jack’s Amazing Shadow by Tom Percival.
We would then go out to the yard and play a game of shadow tag. Children would then be encouraged to observe how long/short their shadows are. They could also observe how much longer teacher’s shadow is. They could then trace each other’s shadows using colourful chalk.
In an art lesson children would make their own sun dials using a lollipop stick stuck into a tub of playdough. Throughout the day they could observe how the sun moves in the sky and they could record the position of the shadow formed each hour.
I would finish the lesson by singing ‘Mr. Golden Sun’ from YouTube with the whole class.
Hi Laura, your sundial activity is a great idea. The children in my class would really enjoy doing this and I’ll definitely be trying it out this year.
Inquiry based activity.
Experiment to see whether objects sink or float.
Beginning of lesson: get children to name a list of objects that they think can sink or float. Introduce the new vocabulary density, more dense and less dense.
Middle of lesson: get children to pick an object to see whether it sinks or floats. Children can choose from the following objects: an orange, a metal spoon, a plastic spoon, a football, a lollipop stick, scissors, a plastic cube, a wooden fork, a pencil, a metal sharpener and an apple. Children can take it in turns to test these objects in a basin of water. They can discuss which objects are less dense and which objects are more dense than water.
End of lesson: Children will be given lots of lollipop sticks and blu tack to make their own rafts which they can let float in a large basin of water. Children can also watch a video on youtube about sinking and floating such as the one on the Dee Dee Show.
I had never heard of Brian Cox before starting this course. I have listened to a few of his videos now and it’s clear straight away how passionate he is about science. I look forward to listening to more of his work as I find children these days are so into science and space so I need to keep up with them!
