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Space Week Classroom Plan for Junior Infants. I like teaching through activity stations so these are some ideas and activities that would be fun for Space Week…
Morning Circle: Rocket Launch and Language Development
Read the picture book ‘Alien Love Underpants’
Discuss new vocabulary and space words. Children can build a cardboard box rocket together.
Maths integration: Counting down/backwards from 10 to 1 for a dramatic floor jump ‘blast-off’.Play Stations: Fine Motor and Sensory
Activity One: “Moon Dust” tray using flour, baby oil, and silver glitter. Add in some hidden plastic stars and scoops to make it more interesting.
Activity Two: Black playdough mats. The children can roll dough “planets” and push white beads or toothpicks into them to make patterns and craters.PE/Gross Motor Skills: Space Walk
Children will develop their balance and spatial awareness skills.
After setting up an obstacle course in the hall, the children can step on “space rocks” (hoops), crawl through a “black hole” (tunnel), and float in slow-motion zero gravity.Creative Art: Galaxy Splat
Children will explore colour mixing and textures.
Using black paper and old toothbrushes, the children will flick white and purple paint across the page to create stars. They can glue on a tinfoil rocket cut-out to finish.I am choosing Hands-On Classroom Themed Activities for this. I will be teaching Junior Infants, and I think the best way to get them into science is through sensory play and lots of experimenting. I’d love to run a STEM challenge based on the theme of Weather with a focus on Animals in the Cold.
I will challenge the children to build a warm, windproof shelter for a toy polar bear or penguin. I think it will be a fun way to mix Engineering – building the dens, Science – seeing what keeps the animal warm, and Maths – counting out materials and measuring the sizes. I’ll give them resources and materials like cotton wool, cardboard, felt, and tinfoil to work with. To test if their shelters actually work, we’ll use a hairdryer on the cool setting to simulate an arctic blizzard and use ice cubes to see if things stay dry. I’ll use the school iPad to take some videos and photos of them testing their designs. They will be encouraged to explain their results and findings and discuss why something did or didn’t work well.Activity Set: Space and Aliens
I would link the lesson with Music and Art.
To introduce the lesson I would play a countdown from 10… 3… 2… 1… Blast Off! And have the children jump up like rockets.
We would discuss what the night sky is like and explain that space is very big, very dark and that it is outside of our world.
I would place a large circle of paper on the floor and tell the children that we are space explorers who have just discovered a new planet.
I will explain that aliens are living creatures, just like us, but from a different planet and that they may look different but they still need to eat and play etc.
Each child will have access to playdough, pipecleaners, match sticks, feathers and goggly eyes. They will be encourage to make their own friendly alien that lives on this new planet that we have discovered on our rocket ship through space.
They will be encouraged to give their Alien an interesting, simple CVC name.Activity Set: The Moon for Junior Infants
Lesson Overview – To explore the surface features and phases of the moon in a playful way
Starter: Ask the class if the moon always looks the same in the sky. Children share their own thoughts and observations. Introduce the word ‘phases’ with regards to the moon. Read the story ‘Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me’ by Eric Carle.
Hands-On Explorations: In pairs, the children can use white playdoh to create different phases of the moon as seen from memory, the story and real life photos on the IWB.
Moon Craters: As seen in the ‘My Sky Tonight’ video, the children will have trays filled with flour. They will experiment dropping different sized objects such as marbles, pebbles, and scrunched up balls of paper and observing the results. The word ‘crater’ will be taught.
Conclusion – Summarise why the moon has a bumpy surface full of craters and that we see different phases of the moon throughout the month.I have enjoyed reading through the responses in this forum. When I read the assignment, and knowing that I’ll be teaching Junior Infants in September, I immediately thought of Floating & Sinking as it will be exciting and playful for the children. It will be easy to prepare a few items to use in the experiment but I plan to allow the children, in pairs, pick an item of their own to test.
I will start by asking them to WONDER if all objects do the same thing when they are in water. I will teach them the key words ‘Float’ and ‘Sink’.
On the board I will create a Mind Map with the class of what they already know about Floating & Sinking.
I will ask them to PREDICT whether an object will float or sink using prediction cards (thumbs up & thumbs down). I will demonstrate how to do the activity in a controlled manner before allowing the children to explore and experiment themselves. They will be supported to record their predictions & findings.Hi, my name is Darren. I was teaching Senior Infants for the last three years and I am moving into Junior Infants this September!
I’m fascinated by space and have gone to see Professor Brian Cox several times – although I do find his lectures & events challenging to follow and understand!
One of my favourite space facts is that if the planets were lined up together, they would fit between the Earth and the Moon!
My basic idea for incorporating AI concepts and tools into a lesson is to give the class an opportunity to use an AI image creator. I’ve chosen Craiyon as it is easy to use, fast and child friendly. https://www.craiyon.com/ It also gives many examples when prompted.
I have Senior Infants and I think this lesson would be a fun and interesting activity in Term 3. They could work in pairs or individually to write their funny/silly sentence.
We would focus on writing simple sentences and the importance of using capital letters and full stops. However, the main objective would be to write a descriptive and humorous sentence. The children would then draw a quick sketch/picture to go with their sentence. Next they would use the iPad and Craiyon to generate an image for the sentence they have written.
Finally, with a friend, they would discuss and compare their drawing with the AI generated image noting similarities and differences.Kahoot is always my go to quiz app but this year I will start exploring the use of Quizizz also. Lots of great ideas on this forum! Thanks!
Having used Scratch before, I was excited to learn that there is a Junior Scratch to use on the iPads. As I am currently teaching Infants I would definitely introduce the app to the children in small station groups before bringing them back together as a whole class to recap what they have learned. As they are very young and it may also be their first time experiencing the app, I would put the children into mixed ability pairs in the hope that each child could help their peer during the introduction phase. I believe I would need some further support from another teacher until the children become more experienced with using the app. I noticed on the Scratch website that they also do Coding Cards which would be very useful for small group work. I’m sure I could also ask Magic School AI for some ideas of motivation tasks and activities for the Scratch Junior app.