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I love the story Aliens in underpants and the kids love it too. Great suggestion to use it a s a promt for a lesson with you ger classes.
Next year, I’m planning to use the “Design and Make a Paper Rocket” activity from the ESERO module with my Senior Infants. I. The past I have built heavier plastic bottle rockets with older classes which the kids have always enjoyed. Paper rockets are much safer, easier to handle, and perfect for senior infants. I would introduce the lesson by watching a short, exciting clip of a real rocket launch. Then, the children will decorate pre-cut templates to personalise their own rockets, which is brilliant for their fine motor skills. We’ll attach a drinking straw to the back, and the children will blow through it to launch them. This fits perfectly into the “Energy and Forces” part of the curriculum. We could use links, cubes or similar to see whose rocket travels furthest, comparing the results and discussing how we might improve for our next launch!! We can use whiteboards to record how far the rockets travel.
It’s amazing to think that animals are so well adapted to their surroundings that they can even control their heart rates to best survive a given habitat.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I enjoyed the series activities based around hot and cold in module 4. There are so many different activities that are appropriate to use with my senior infants in the coming academic year. I enjoy the use of a children’s coat to show how insulation and thermal protection works and comparing this with how animals for etc works in cold temperatures. I think that some of the ice cube experiments are very easy practical ways to demonstrate the concepts of hot and cold and to link it back to light and shadows from previous modules. We will place ice cubes in the shade and I the sun and predict and discuss what will happen to them. We will then check on their progress at set intervals and record through words or pictures what has happened. Tis could be repeated with the use of insulation to compare with the use of coats in winter time and contrasted with the findings if the first experiment.</p>
Super suggestions I agree the children would enjoy and should have a better understanding of the the sky and the stars and why they are to be seen at night. I think the recent solar eclipse has made us all reflect more on what’s up there!
Next year I will be teaching senior infants and I think teaching about stars will be much more interesting after completing this module. It’s great to have practical examples of simple lessons and activities to use in the coming year. I would start showing the class a set of showing the class a set of 5 marbles and discussing if they think there are more stars I. The sky than there are marbles in the jar. We would develop this by asking are there more stars in the sky than children in the class. Then placing an Equal number of marbles to the childrenin the class in a separate jar and ecolaing that there are even more stars in the sky than marbles in this jar. We would continue our investigations using videos and pictures to explain that stars give off light and can be seen during the night when not cloudy and that the sun is a star. We would tie this into visual arts by creating s painting of a sky fill of stars using a splatter painting technique. I think that s class of senior infants would enjoy this simple and clear approach. We would finish by discussing what the class might like to learn sbou t stars next.
I agree I think shadows and light are the ideal topic to take learning outside the classroom. I think there are age appropriate ways to make this an interesting and fun lesson for all class groups.
I particularly enjoyed the ideas for activities based on shadows and light. Next year I would like to try the activity of investigating shadows in the schoolyard. I would start with pictures of the sun in the classroom and and pictures of nighttime. Ask the children what is different and why. We might then decide what we would like to find out more about followed by observing our shadows in the schoolyard. I would ensure that ths class understsnd that light doesn’t travel through opaque objescts therefore casting a shadow. Questions such as what does your shadow look like, is it the same as you and what time of the day does it look lost similar to you would all be useful in investigating sahdows in the school yard together as a class. We could trace around our shadows in the morning, afternoon and just before home time and discuss the findings and maybe choose what we might like to learn next together as a class. Shadows are around us all day every day and I really like the idea of exploring them in more depth to better understand why they happen.
My name is Donal and I’ll be teaching senior infants next year. I enjoyed the simple suggestions for teaching whether gravity is a push or pull force. Gravity being a force we take for granted, I think the activity for lying down or bending over in different positions, trying one aarm raised etc and discussing what it feels like and trying to feel where the blood is flowing is an excellent inquiry based age appropriate activity for senior infants to begin exploring the concept of gravity. A lead on activity could be to compare and contrast these findings with how gravity is experienced in space. This is a simple activity that I hope to try with my class next year particularly given how topical space currently is after the recent solar eclipse.