[Frances McCarthy]

Thanks for sharing the video links, your post got caught in pending, so sorry for the delay in it appearing.

Would you carry out a practical investigation about the layers of fat? Blubber glove has been described by a few other teachers.

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/blubber-gloves

[Frances McCarthy]

Anna,

I’d change the order slightly in the activity, and give the children some experience with floating and sinking actual objects before asking them to

using critical thinking they must figure out which objects float/sink

Their own mental models of why things float and sink can be built up through play and observing a range of toys or other items in the classroom.

ESERO have a suggested range of objects (the ones that are dropped in this module) that can also be floated (see  https://esero.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/04_Does-Saturn-float.pdf). In this case, they can explore, draw generalisations, then make predictions for other objects to float and sink.

I’d actually disagree with the statement at the end of the Saturn sheet –

It is important that the children discover that whether an object sinks or floats depends on the material it is made from and not its shape; it is not dependent on the size of the object.

Since you can shape plasticine to float by making it into a boat or raft shape.

 

[Frances McCarthy]

Margaret,

I’ve made this one with ages 7-10, it is very simple and they loved choosing their own colours and making stars with different coloured points. Some stuck them together as suggested, others turned the points around.

I used regular orgami paper (15cm by 15cm) that I had cut into 4 squares, each square being 7.5cm on a side, so that each star point turns out about  10cm long and 5cm across. You need the equivalent of 2 sheets per star (8 points).

[Frances McCarthy]

Mark,

I like how you have planned this as a unit, and it’ll probably take place over the month as you have suggested.

In the autumn, the 3rd quarter Moon is high in the sky in the mornings. It will be great to view last week of September and last week of October at around 10am. Either of these times would be great to start this unit, since we must (I hope) get at least one sunny morning in a week!

[Frances McCarthy]

Rachel,

there are a few called the Seasons song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZjpI6fgYSY 

from Have Fun Teaching

with these lyrics:

Here we go, oh, oh
Seasons of the year

Here comes the spring with the rain pouring down
Here comes the spring with the flowers in the ground
Here comes the spring with the rainbow in the sky
Here comes the spring to bring new life

Here comes the summer with the heat from the sun
Here comes the summer with the kids having fun
Here comes the summer with the warm breeze
Here comes the summer with the trees so green

Here comes the fall with the leaves changing color
Here comes the fall with the climate getting cooler
Here comes the fall with the leaves falling down
Here comes the fall with the wind blowing loud

Here comes the winter with the ice and the snow
Here comes the winter with the freezing cold
Here comes the winter with the days getting shorter
Here comes the winter with the nights getting longer

or

https://youtu.be/C_Sc5ZjdfFI?si=9LZBSfzyQDhtbjPQ

from Super Simple Songs

Lyrics:
Winter and spring, summer and fall.
No matter the season, I love them all.
There’s always a reason to wake up and say,
“What a lovely season it is today!”

In the spring I love the flowers.
In the summer I love the sun.
In the fall I love the falling leaves.
They keep falling, one by one.

In the winter I love the flurries of snow.
There’s a magic in the air.
When you open your eyes and look around,
there’s beauty everywhere.

Winter and spring, summer and fall.
No matter the season, I love them all.
There’s always a reason to wake up and say,
“What a lovely season it is today!”

In the spring I love the flowers.
In the summer I love the sun.
In the fall I love the falling leaves.
They keep falling, one by one.

In the winter I love the flurries of snow.
There’s a magic in the air.
When you open your eyes and look around,
there’s beauty everywhere.

Winter and spring, summer and fall.
No matter the season, I love them all.
There’s always a reason to wake up and say,
“What a lovely season it is today!”

What a lovely season it is today!
What a lovely season it is today!
What a lovely season it is today!
What a lovely season it is today!
What a lovely season it is today!
What a lovely season it is today!
What a lovely season it is today!

[Frances McCarthy]

Rachel, for infants I really recommend the rocket mice – they are easy to make, safe to use and go up like a rocket.

Start collecting the milk bottles now and you’ll have a nice set for the autumn.

Different grocery stores have different thickness milk bottle plastic, so shop around if you can.

[Frances McCarthy]

Catherine,

I like the idea of the 2-d representation of constellation patterns. Some are more distinctive than others (the asterism of the Plough for example), so would be more straightforward.

A small favourite of mine is Delphinus, visible near Cyngus in the summer months. It is a distinctive diamond with a small tail.

It could be interesting to give the class the same sheet of randomly spotted paper (representing the stars) and ask them to compare the shapes that they chose to make constellations from.

[Frances McCarthy]

Hi Ciara,

you make a point about ” removing the pressure of needing a ‘right’ answer, ” that I frequently make in teacher training sessions.

Nobody ever got a Nobel Prize for knowing the answer before they started!

I advise putting on an air of a slight befuddlement when carrying out investigations — tell the children that last time you did this activity with a class the weather was different / the class chose to use XX  instead of YY and so YOU DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER. This means they aren’t trying to get the “right” / “teacher” answer.

With the jellies, the technique of getting fingerprints should be given to the children, they can then consider if they could improve the technique in some way and then go on to use the technique to tell them something new about fingerprints that they have predicted based on their understanding. It could be something simple like — does the size of a fingerprint depend on the size of the person (do tall people have big fingers?)….

[Frances McCarthy]

Hi Rachael,

welcome to this course, you’ll find a lot of suggestions from other teachers of infants, so I do urge you to explore the forums as well as the course material.

In this course we are specifically referring to the Curious Minds ESERO Framework for Inquiry when we look at inquiry activities. So for making a model of space using children as stars/suns/planets/moons – the actual scenario could be the prompt, they could then share what they know and ask questions that they might use secondary sources to verify.

So – a child who knows that the Moon goes around the Earth, but thinks the Sun also goes around the Earth can share what they think the model should look like, then can check it from books or other sources.

Questions that can lead to further investigations are a sign that the inquiry is at the right level. I heard once that if a class are saying “we get it, we get it” then they don’t – since a class that “gets it” will have lots more questions (whatever ‘it’ is!)

[Frances McCarthy]

Coral,

if you have access to paint programmes on computers, you can actually edit the images that the Stellarium app uses. Copy them and give them out to the children to draw over and you will have personalised images!

There are instruction on how to do these at our DOME project:

https://dome.nuclio.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/D.O.M.E.-QuickStartGuide-Stellarium.pdf

[Frances McCarthy]

The Week in a Life of an Astronaut is lovely – it is suggested for ages 8-12, do you reckon you could use it with infants?

We tried to make a version that could be used in Irish primary in our Mission to the Moon – where I had help from a trainee teacher to create activities that directly linked to the Irish curriculum.

 

[Frances McCarthy]

Aoife,

Floating and sinking and observing different objects to see if they float or sink is a standard of infant classes- and has some lovely complexity to if you choose flat objects like plastic rulers – where surface tension comes into play.

I’d be sure to ask the children to give a reason why “they think [it] can sink or float.” Then you are connecting their understanding to the investigation. If they are only guessing, then give them some time to play with water and objects and see what they notice and what concepts they form to explain what they see.

I’d be cautious about density as a concept – it appears nowhere in the Science Curriculum for primary school except in the glossary as

floating: the tendency of an object to remain on the surface of
a liquid; an object will float if its density is less than that of the liquid; the weight of a floating body is equal to the weight of fluid displaced; the force up and the force down on the body are equal.

You might use “heavy for its size” “light for its size” instead, considering that measurement of weight and measurement of capacity is higher up the progression criteria in Maths / Measuring.

[Frances McCarthy]

Coral,

I think it is worth splitting this into two different inquiries, since the requirement for seeds can be quite different from plants.

Some seeds can start to grow in light, but most need darkness (which is why we plant them!) Seeds generally need water, oxygen and a suitable temperature.

See this resource: https://web.extension.illinois.edu/gpe/case3/c3facts3.html

Once the seed has sprouted, then the growth of the plant can be investigated.

 

 

[Frances McCarthy]

Jennifer,

other teachers had recommended that book, I’d forgotten it. But, reviewing it, I remember it, and remember that the science of them flying “millions of stars till at last they landed on the moon.”  bothered me last year as well!

https://youtu.be/6c5cb0u0rPM?si=EV7hFPHZU5Cyhfkl

 

Cute pictures, nice rocket from a cardboard box, great opportunity to discuss if the baby bear would need anything else on his trip to the Moon (like a spacesuit!)

[Frances McCarthy]

Amy,

Egg-stronauts is a favourite of mine too! I like to show them the spacecraft that some astronauts use to return to Earth as a prompt towards designing a good seat for their eggs.

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2014/05/Alexander_last_check_of_Soyuz_TMA-13M

This is ESA’s Alexander Gerst, checking the Soyuz a few days before his flight in 2014.

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