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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.
3rd Class – Plan for Space Week
Rockets – Learning about rockets. KWL chart on rockets. What do they know? What do they want to learn? And finally, at the end of the week, revisit the KWL chart to discuss what they have learned.
Monday
Flying Mice!
Resources: Templates for the Mice and 1L, 2L, and 3L plastic milk cartons, Sellotape, and crayons
Explain that we are going to make our own mouse rockets and demonstrate how to make a mouse rocket and make it fly.
All the children then make their own mice for flying and choose a milk carton.
Tuesday
Balloon Rockets—Resources: Balloons, straws, string.
Wednesday
Paper Straw Rockets
Resources: Templates, straws, tape, scissors, and a pencil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTd2f59TSVo&t=5s
Thursday
Launch a rocket with a fizzy vitamin tablet and a tube. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only change from one form to another. The energy from the fizzy tablet is released, pushing the rocket into the air.
Friday
Team work. Divide the class into teams to teach each experiment to four other different classes. Gather all the materials needed and flip chart of procedural writing for each experiment.
3rd Class – Plan for Space Week
Rockets – Learning about rockets. KWL chart on rockets. What do they know? What do they want to learn? And finally, at the end of the week, revisit the KWL chart to discuss what they have learned.
Monday
Flying Mice!
Resources: Templates for the Mice and 1L, 2L, and 3L plastic milk cartons, Sellotape, and crayons
Explain that we are going to make our own mouse rockets and demonstrate how to make a mouse rocket and make it fly.
All the children then make their own mice for flying and choose a milk carton.
Tuesday
Balloon Rockets—Resources: Balloons, straws, string.
Wednesday
Paper Straw Rockets
Resources: Templates, straws, tape, scissors, and a pencil
Thursday
Fizzy rockets using fizzy vitamin tablets and the long cylindrical tubes.
Friday
Divide the 3rd class into teams to teach each experiment by show and tell to four other classes in the school. They can practice first and write out the procedure and decide what stories to read to introduce the experiment.
Hi Caroline,
I have done a few of these rocket experiments with different class groups, including straw rockets with 5th class. The straw rockets were a great idea to integrate measuring distance in maths. Once they had made their rockets, they took to the schoolyardto measure the distance they could fly.
Another rocket experiment I have done is the balloon rocket for the whole class. This is a lovely experiment, as it shows clearly the propulsion and thrust of the air, and the visual effect of the balloon travelling on the string across the classroom is very effective.
I like your idea of the KWL chart on rockets. I think the children would have many interesting ideas on rockets and knowledge.
I would like to do the experiment of making mice rockets with junior classes and launch a rocket with a fizzy vitamin tablet.
Activity Set: Hot and Cold
Materials needed: Ice Cubes, foil, bubble wrap, paper, wool, plastic.
Set the class up in teams and let them predict which material would keep the ice cube frozen when placed on the radiator. They needed to predict which would melt first.
Aims:
To understand that metal can conduct heat.
That air acts as an insulator.
They find that the ice cube in the foil melts the fastest, along with the paper and tissue, followed by the wool, and finally, slowly, the bubble wrap.
This experiment could also be carried out on a hot day by placing these items, wrapping them in different materials, and placing them in the shade and the sun.
Another investigation we carried out was which is the coldest part of the room, recording the temperatures using a digital thermometer. The children make predictions beforehand and give reasons for their answers.
This gives an interesting result, learning about cold air being dense and falling to the ground and learning the need for air circulation with warm air rising.
In these investigations the children are working scientifically, asking questions about where would be warmest to sit in the classroom, where they can draw solid conclusions by interpreting the temperatures.
Hi Amanda,
The Friday box sounds like a great idea that would encourage the children to bring in the items needed. I spend a lot of time trying to gather materials needed for STEM.
Another good idea was when I needed lots of shoe boxes, I just asked at one of the shoe shops to collect their shoe boxes for me, and they did. I used them to create light boxes lined with tin foil for growing seedlings, and investigating if shiny objects can be seen in the dark.
The Friday box is something I would use to ensure involvement from the children and even to email parents to let them know that there are items we need for STEM.
Hi Lisa,
This is a lovely lesson on aliens. This is a great idea: doing clay modeling to make creative responses to how they think aliens might look. I would also add a story like Aliens Love Underpants or a poem, The Alien, by Julie Holder.
Also, using the different weather patterns on different planets to show how these aliens must adapt and comparing them to species found on Earth is excellent. Bats using echolocation, elephants being able to smell water from great distances, and even a puffer fish and how it can puff itself up as a defense tactic. Exploring how animals on Earth have adapted can give real inspiration to how they could create their own space aliens.
Activity Set: Stars
3rd Class
The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson
Extract Chapter “Dark is Wonderful” about the excitement of looking at the stars and planets at night. The astronomer pointed out the bright pole star, the Plough, and Orion the great hunter to Plop to help the small owl overcome his fear of the dark.
Using this extract, I will introduce the idea of constellations in the night sky. We will look at the most common constellations that are visible from our night skies in Ireland.
We will look at some photographs of the Plough and count the number of stars needed to create this constellation.
Integration with maths and length as I will run through the items needed to create their own constellation of the Plough. Some children may make other constellations.
https://teachnet.ie/ej/pdf/dpsm_class_activity_the_plough.pdf
Following the activity above, the 3rd class will have two sheets and will copy a photocopy of the Big Dipper to measure the distance between stars and then measure each of the 7 pieces of wool to be 30 cm in length.
Using one square piece of kitchen foil, it can be taped to one piece of wool and made into a ball. Repeat this step with all pieces of tin foil and wool.
Poke a hole through each marking of the cardboard where the seven stars are located.
Measure the length of wool and mark 12 cm, 23 cm, and so on with a piece of chalk so that once completed, the stars will all hang at different heights.
Name the stars.
Attach the constellations to the classroom ceiling and look at it from different angles.
Finally, make a drawing of your constellation.
Procedural writing:
The children could write out the procedure for making their own constellation.
Persuasive writing
Should we protect our view of the stars by reducing light pollution? Discuss
This is a link to my mind map so far
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVIgaKQBA=/?share_link_id=593827899998
Hi Sinead,
This is a wonderful idea to create a wonder wall as a place to pose questions from the children that could lead to inquiry-based learning.
There are many options here: to create a single theme on stars, the moon, the earth, falling things, or rockets and focus on one theme or to simply write space.
Quite often it can be challenging to come up with an inquiry that the children will be interested in investigating. The idea of a Wonder Wall may help to create an inquisitive mind and create more questions about their world and outer space.
Biodiversity through the Seasons
Acorn/Hazelnut Floatation test in autumn
Materials: acorns from nature walk, soil, water, basin, milk cartons.
“Acorns that float are no good for planting.”
The children can observe and make predictions about which acorns will float or sink. They can describe and make small drawings of their acorns. Children can test to see if each acorn will float or sink.
Can we verify the truth of this statement? Will acorns that float not grow? Can we test this prediction?
Create a table—recording data. Number of acorns using this chance to count out loud and, secondly, creating a pictogram on the table separating the acorns with a stick. Float and Sink.
Planting acorns that sank and clearly labeling that they sank and the date, and then a second group that did not sink, and seeing which will germinate.
Leave milk cartons planted with acorns out in the school garden and observe growth in spring. Discuss findings.
Activity: The Sun and Shadows
The Sun Activity Set.
KWL chart on the sun: What do you know? What do you want to know? What have you learned (as a reflection at the end of the lesson)?
The Sun Is My Favorite Star by Frank Asch (BOOK)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mz4O1Vnj6M
What do you know about the sun? After reading the book, the children can reflect on a way the sun helps us.
The sun makes us warm. It provides light for us. It helps the plants grow. But also, the sun may not be so helpful all the time.
Introduce the idea of invisible light. Ultraviolet light. UV light. We don’t see that light, but it helps our bones grow strong, and it also burns us!
The teacher turns the light on—and the children say ultraviolet light. Practice saying the words.
Discuss the harm of UV light. How can we protect ourselves from UV light?
· Sunscreen
· Clothes
· Umbrella
· Sunglasses
· Hats
Drama—act out a day in the sun at the beach. In pairs. Mime putting on your hat. Putting up your umbrella. Wearing sunglasses.
B’fhéidir cleacht deir ó’grádaigh a himirt chomh maith. Cuir ort do speaclaí gréine. Oscail do scáth fearthainne. Cuir ort do hata. cuir grianscéithe ar d’aghaidh.
Make UV bracelets. Bring children outside to see how the beads change colour. Why do the beads change colour?
As a follow-up activity, the children could investigate shadows using torches on a dull day in the classroom. This can be a fun activity to see what interesting aliens they could make with shadows and using their imaginations. We have also used our hands to make different animals on a white sheet of paper.
