[Elaine Townsend]

Lots of great ideas in this plan Louise. I am definitely going to do some of these and I particularly like the way you have broken it down day by day into themes. This would help us to make sure we’re not bombarding the kids with an overload of information because there are so many aspects to space that we could cover. This would help me as a teacher to focus on certain themes one at a time.

[Elaine Townsend]

I’ve learned some nice ideas doing this course for Space week.
Class plan for a Senior Infants class might look like the following:
English: Passport into Space, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ( oral language, rhyming, phonics), Astronomy Picture of the day( oral language).
Aistear: Space themed stations including role play, Marvin and Milo puppets, designing and constructing spacecraft, playdoh for making aliens etc
Maths: Launching a Rocket for counting backwards 5,4,3,2,1
Space themed maths games, counting stars, counting the planets etc
Art/Science: Make a Rocket Mouse and launch it, Make star constellations
Geography: Virtual tours using Stellarium and SpaceWeek.ie
History: Learn about Neil Armstrong
Drama: Space themed role play
Gaeilge: Fóclóir and activities based on space, Twinkle Twinkle as Gaeilge.
PE: Space themed games: duck duck gooose could become astronaut astronaut alien, Make up a space dance- how astronauts would dance in space and on the moon( this would tie in nicely with gravity)

[Elaine Townsend]

Niamh, I’m going to rob your ideas for my infant class next year!! Such fun, educational stations that are guaranteed to keep them busy but also enthralled in their learning. Particularly love the ideas of dressing teddy for his various climate holidays and the weather reporting!

[Elaine Townsend]

Some really good online resources and tools in this module. I’ll definitely be setting up a space themed Aistear area this year and I’ll be using lots of the activities and resources from this course to engage the kid’s interests and learning. The Astronomy picture of the day is a great idea that I could use for oral language development during Aistear. In small groups, we can discuss the pictures and talk about what they see. It would also be a great way of exposing them to space and science from a young age as lots of young children wouldn’t get to see such images otherwise.
I really liked people’s ideas of using pegboards for exploring the different constellations which would also enhance their fine motor skills. This could be done during Aistear or as a morning routine activity. A junk art station could also be set up to make space shuttles and rockets, they would really enjoy this.
Stellarium looks like a wonderful star gazing tool that I hadn’t heard of pre-course. I plan to use this for some science lessons as the boys will enjoy the 3D images and videos.
Lastly, Marvin and Milo is another great resource for the younger classes and I intend on using this for role play activities. These characters could also be incorporated into Gaeilge lessons using puppets perhaps?

[Elaine Townsend]

Sinead, love your idea of playing the Star Wars theme music in the background. That would surely capture their interest immediately! Also hanging the constellations under their desks and on the ceiling is a super way for them to see the way stars look from various directions.

[Elaine Townsend]

I’d like to do the activity set on Stars with my Senior Infants class. The obvious choice for a starting point would be the song ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. I’d sing the song with them adding in finger actions focusing on stars in the sky and some shooting stars too. This would be done through circle time. We can then move onto identifying rhyming words in the song and make various lists of rhyming words. I would then read the lovely book ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ by Iza Trapani. We would finish this English lesson with a sequencing and writing activity in little groups.
We could also do some pattern tracing and cutting skills using this song.
For Maths, I’d use the ‘Lots and lots of stars’ lesson with the marbles for counting and asking the various questions of ‘ who thinks there are more stars in the sky than these marbles?’. I’d explain there are billions of stars in the sky more than all the grains of sand in the world! I told my own 7 year old this when I read it in this module and she was fascinated! I’d use the worksheet for counting, numbering and drawing the correct number of stars.
For Art, I’d complete the ‘Starry Sky’ activity. Prior to this, we’d discuss the discussion sheet of the starry sky and then complete the activity using toothbrushes.

[Elaine Townsend]

I agree with you Mark. These activities would work so well in engaging their interest while simultaneously helping them to understand what astroids and craters actually are and their effects on the moon. So many of us are visual and hands on learners so these would be excellent in that regard.

[Elaine Townsend]

I would choose the activity set ‘The Moon’to do with my senior infants class and incorporate it into many curricular areas particularly Aistear. For Aistear, I would have 4 stations for my 4 groups(only 17 in my incoming class). I would definitely have a role play/dress up station for the kids to roleplay astronauts on a mission to the moon! They adore dressing up and role playing so this would be great fun!
An art station could be set up to do ‘The man in the moon’activity from this module and could be completed over the course of a week. An oral language station led by me could focus on ‘The Moon’rhyme done through circle time with lots of discussion on what the moon looks like. My last station would be a Maths mini lesson focusing on the different shapes of the moon( draw,label then colour). They could also make 3D versions.

[Elaine Townsend]

This sounded like a really good activity to do with the kids!! Very interesting but also so engaging, interactive and fun! I bet they loved it. I will def do this next year with my class and the Aistear activity on ice, so easy to organise but a very effective idea.Well done

[Elaine Townsend]

Hi,My name is Elaine and I’ll be teaching Senior Infants in Sept,the same as this year. Was in SET for years and before that I mainly taught the older classes. I chose this course as I struggled to find time to teach Science this year as there is so much to cover so I’m looking forward to seeing how I can integrate this into Aistear and other areas.
A fact about space that I think is cool is that on the planet of Mercury, a day is twice as long as a year!
One inquiry based activity we did this year was on the topic of floating and sinking. The prompt I used was ‘The float and sink’song from Pinterest. This really helped to stimulate discussion around floating and sinking and to elicit prior knowledge also. I work in a Deis band 1 school with a very high percentage of foreign national students. So it was important to make sure they understood the terms first! What do these words mean? We then conducted our experiments to see which materials would sink or float. We did 2 or 3 collectively as a class before they conducted their own in small groups. I gave them different objects and got them to group them into 2 groups- the ones they thought would sink and then the ones they thought would float( predicting). They then tested them to see if they were right and recorded their results on a chart with pictures. They loved doing this! They then told me their findings.
I finished the lesson off by focusing on the importance of weight and volume. As a class,we tested various materials that had the same volume but different weights and then vice versa. The next step was to do these experiments in their own groups in the next lesson.

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