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I think it is fascinating how our ancestors observed the night sky and the movement of the rising sun and how this has integrated with our Catholic religion, including the interesting talk on Halloween and death. The harvest is taken in, and the Catholics celebrate All Saints’ Day on the 1st of November and All Souls’ Day on the 2nd of November.
The winter solstice showing the light enter the chamber at Newgrange could be an opportunity to look at ancient burial sites in Ireland, including dolmens and the construction and engineering of corbelled roofs in buildings at Howth and Dowth. The children could also use Google Maps to get a bird’s-eye view of these sites and how they are located very close together in Meath. They can also drop the man and walk around these sites and see how these structures were built from the outside. They could integrate the theme of the sunset with the change in the sunrise and set in Galway. We can only see the sunset on Galway Bay in winter, as it has moved 60 degrees south.
Stopping By Woods on A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Someone Came Knocking by Walter de la Mare
Star Light, Star Bright
Starlight, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.Hey Diddle, Diddle, The Cat and the Fiddle
Stories
Stories of the Banshee at night
Oíche na Gaoithe Móire ar an 6ú/7ú lá de Mhí Eanáir –
Owl Moon by Jane Yolen – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy5wxU4T1Ho
Owl Babies by Martin Waddell
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Peace at Last By Jill Murphy
The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson
Mog on Fox Night by Judith Kerr
The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn
Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
Katie and the Starry Night by James Mayhew
How To Catch A Star by Oliver Jeffers
Songs
Mr. Golden Sun
When you Wish Upon a Star by Cliff Edwards
I See The Moon And The Moon Sees Me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSGkJSHzjpU
A Spaceman Came Travelling by Chris De Burgh
Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles
You Saw The Whole Of The Moon by The Waterboys
Where The Stars Go Blue by Ryan Adams
Waiting for a star to fall by Boy Meets Girl
There are a number of animals that we could investigate that are nocturnal that are easily followed in the Wild Things at School book, including the snail, the fox, and the hedgehog.
A lesson could begin with a KWL chart asking what the children know, what they want to find out, and a reflection after asking what they have learned.
Art, song, and poetry can be integrated by learning how to draw simple pictures following the teacher’s instructions. Acrostic poetry could also be integrated to help the children reflect on what they have learned. Wild Kids on RTE Player introduces the children to many of these creatures in their night habitat and how, for example, the fox has adapted to the urban environment.
The Urban Fox survey encourages children to record foxes they might see at night in their locality and information about the same can be found here
There are many folklore tales about foxes, including the story of Saint Brigid and the fox. Simple stories such as the Gingerbread Man, The Fox and the Goose and Fantastic Mr. Fox all show how clever our Irish Foxes can be.
Stopping By Woods on A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Someone Came Knocking by Walter de la Mare
Star Light, Star Bright
Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.
Hey Diddle, Diddle, The Cat and the FiddleStories
Stories of the Banshee at night
Oíche na Gaoithe Móire ar an 6ú/7ú lá de Mhí Eanáir –
Owl Moon by Jane Yolen – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy5wxU4T1Ho
Owl Babies by Martin Waddell
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Peace at Last By Jill Murphy
The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson
Mog on Fox Night by Judith Kerr
The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn
Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
Katies and the Starry Night by James Mayhew
How To Catch A Star by Oliver JeffersSongs
Mr. Golden Sun
When you Wish Upon a Star by Cliff Edwards
I See The Moon And The Moon Sees Me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSGkJSHzjpU
A Spaceman Came Travelling by Chris De Burgh
Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles
You Saw The Whole Of The Moon by The Waterboys
Where The Stars Go Blue by Ryan Adams
Waiting for a star to fall by Boy Meets GirlUsing the book Wild Things at School, we in 3<sup>rd</sup> class could study the swallow and in September have a look at the swallows close by the school gathering on the telephone wires. I would do a concept map on the swallow, including the things they eat, where they live, what they do, and what they look like, and we could observe them using school binoculars. I would also introduce the children to the Merlin Bird app to show how the bird song can be recorded and identified. This is a useful tool at home too to identify what birds are in your garden.
I would discuss how the light pollution of the sky at night from street lights could impact the migrating journey of the swallow, and for homework I would ask the children to carry out their own investigation. We could brainstorm the possible impacts of light pollution on birds, such as how do birds know when to get up and sing?
The children can carry out their own investigation at home with two particular questions to answer.
Will your eyes adjust better to the dark if you place a red filter over your torch?
Or will your eyes adapt better by closing them for 30 seconds and opening them again in the dark?
Conduct an investigation?
Pick a route. Maybe go to the garden and turn off the outdoor light. Measure how long the route is.
Walk the path and see how long it takes in daylight.
- Walk the same route and only change one thing each time.
- Change the light to red coloured.
- Close your eyes for 30 seconds.
Hi Lyndsy,
I would agree with your assessment of the loss of dark skies in the city and the growing number of housing estates and floodlights to light up pitches. Recently, in Galway we could see the Northern Lights, but they were not as visible in the city and, in fact, were very faint when compared to friends who live in the countryside. The stars even 20km out towards the countryside from here are an entirely different experience. I think a big problem is also the street lighting and the more efficient LED bulbs that are used to light them.
Rising Stars Awards
I am teaching 3<sup>rd</sup> class. We could create a research programme to investigate the light pollution along Salthill Promenade with a specific focus on bats. Salthill, as is the River Corrib, is home to many bats, including the common pipistrelle, soprano pipistrelle and Daubenton’s bat. The children could focus on learning about how these bats live, learning about their habitat and food sources.
A project like this will take a few weeks, beginning with learning about light pollution and what dark skies are and questioning why we may not be able to see the Milky Way from different parts of Ireland. Although we don’t have a sky quality meter, we could create an observation sheet to record the quality of the night sky, whether they can see any constellations and the phase of the moon.
The children could integrate maths by creating a tally chart to record the number of lights along the prom, creating different kinds of lights, be it street lighting facing down or pillar lights on the footpaths far from the road. These tally charts could be created into bar charts and histograms using Microsoft Word.
The children could work together in groups to discuss an action plan, and the Galway Bat Group could be invited to the class to speak about their work with bats. They also run bat night walks in the local woods, and the local Galway Aquarium has night bat walks along the prom that the children could attend with their parents.
Finally, the children could put together a presentation to show to other classes in the school to talk about and raise awareness about light pollution. They could present their findings of the number of lights and detail the difference between a warm light and a blue light and their impact on our local natural environment. And finally, they could present information on bats, including the different species found in Salthill, Galway, and how we can help support the dark skies initiative.
I was thinking of doing this last year with my class and instead made the constellation lanterns with the children designing their own constellations. What I really like about this experiment/STEAM project is the children can integrate measuring in cms in 3rd class. They can also observe the patterns of the constellations and print off the constellation wheel to observe them at night when they are back home. Area can also be integrated here by giving measurements for length and width for the pieces of tin foil.
The moon is 380,000 km away from the Earth. Takes the moon a month to go around the Earth.
Earth’s natural satellite. The moon has different phases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz01pTvuMa0 A video about the phases of the moon and an experiment using four resources: a lamp, a foam sphere, a pencil and yourself. This is a very good experiment to demonstrate to the children how we view the moon from Earth.
I used ChatGPT to find the dates and take the work out of finding the dates and times best for viewing the moon from our school in Galway during the school day. It took some refining of the questions and the times that we are at school to view the moon in the daytime sky. The best time for us generally is after a full moon and to look west.
These dates are ideal because:
- the Moon is still above the horizon at 9:00 a.m.,
- it is large and bright (waning gibbous to just after full).
- It is easy for children to spot against a blue daytime sky.
For a school activity:
- Time: 9:00–10:00 a.m.
- Direction: Face west.
- Tip: Ask the children to cover the Sun with a building or stand with the Sun behind them. The Moon is much easier to see when you’re not looking near the Sun.
I asked for the observing sessions to be on the same day of the week each month.
For a school group, the best Tuesdays are the following:
- ⭐ 29 September
- ⭐ 27 October
- ⭐ 29 December
On these mornings, the Moon will be:
- above the horizon at 9:00–10:00 a.m.,
- bright and easy to spot in a blue sky,
- located in the western part of the sky.
The moon doesn’t make its own light. The sun lights up the moon, and we can see it half and half between the daytime and the nighttime. We just don’t seem to notice it as much during the day.
I would also include the workshop on the different phases of the moon so the children become familiar with the names.
This lesson I have posted involves many different mathematical elements, including learning about longitude and latitude, angles and using a protractor plus telling time.
Another great idea for younger classes is to use the bucket and stick and place stones where the shadows land for each hour to see how the shadows move. For infants it would be lovely to just explore shadows. On a dark, overcast winter day the children used white paper and torches to create hand-puppet shadows on paper and learned to make different animals by making shapes. It can be difficult for children to understand the concept of each spinning to create night and day and that at night we are simply in the shadow.
5<sup>th</sup> and 6<sup>th</sup> class
Lesson on Sundials and telling the time
Asking a trigger question: What time is it?
It’s easy to look at the clock in our classroom or read our watch. But back in ancient Egypt, they found that people used to tell the time by using a sundial.
I will show them some photos of sundials and explain that we are going to make our own sundial.
We will have to find out the latitude of Galway City to pinpoint exactly where we are on planet Earth. We will learn a bit about longitude and latitude to find a geographic location and find this in relation to our school.
We can use iPads to find the exact location by using Google Maps. Clicking on the location of the school and right-clicking to bring up the information.
I will explain that we need to cut out the gnomon with the correct angle for where we live, being 53 degrees, and use the protractor to confirm.
The children can use the set on the paper printout and cut it out. We will place them outside the point south. Our school faces the east, and we can explore how the sun rises higher in the sky in the summer and lower in the winter. We can also connect the ideas of direction to the Catholic religion, where graveyards face the rising sun, and Newgrange, built circa 3,200 BC on the shortest day of the year, also faces the rising sun. In today’s modern age the orientation of our homes will dictate the usefulness of solar panels and whether rooms are warmer or cooler.
The children can work in pairs to create their sundials, and we can leave them in the school garden, which is south-facing.