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Arlene,
can you tell me a bit more about the moon-like props?
Module 2 looks at learning about the Moon through maths and science activities, and includes shape (crescent, circle etc) as well as modelling the behaviour of light as it lights a 3-D object as viewed from different angles.
Sounds good Niall, and I appreciate the delicacy required for balance, particularly with a cohort who may be used to lots of support, and can’t figure out where to get started with an open ended task.
This resource from SpaceWeek.ie might help other teachers, it is concerned with what goes in the space capsule:
https://www.spaceweek.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/HumansinSpace.pdf
Eimear,
Food for astronauts on the ISS is really interesting!
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8598698/space-food
Since they are in microgravity, their sinuses get stuffy, and they can’t taste food very well – you can try this by asking children to eat something with their noses pinched close.
You might use the Space Picnic resource: https://esero.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Space-Picnic-2016-ENGLISH.pdf
Astronaut Dan Tani, a patron of BCO, told me that they waited for the fresh food delivery and ate onions raw!
Eimear,
I’d recommend again the gorgeous art of the exoplanet bureau from NASA:
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/exoplanet-travel-bureau/?intent=021and the similar variant from our Solar System: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/
Hi Shauna,
welcome to this course. As you may have noticed, the forums are rich with shared experience – so take the time to peruse them.
As for Mars – the reason Olympus Mons is so big has to do with the fact that it is volcanic on a planet that does not have plate tectonics. On Earth, the volcanoes erupt at the margins of the plates, but since the plates move, the volcanoes can’t get too big. On Mars, the eruption happened over and over again, so the mountain got big!
You can explore this idea with a class using this resource: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/resources/project/make-a-volcano/
Kevin,
if you want to track the Plough over the course of a night, you might want to look at this resource that was created for informal group use.
https://www.spaceweek.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/The-Plough-Clock.pdf
It outlines how to make a Plough Clock, where the angle of the Plough to the horizon at a certain time of year is linked to the time of night. You need a strong three-d visualisation of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun to make sense of it!
Kevin – that sounds like a lot of fun, don’t forget to register it as an event on spaceweek.ie.
Check there for suggestions from past participants, including this guide for Space Week Whole Week Plans.
Kevin – sorry on the mind map not being easy to place on the platform. If you have it scanned as a google doc that can be shared as a link.
The fingerprints activity is a good example of a particular skill linked to a topic – from carrying this out, the children will know much more about fingerprints and will have the ability to take imprints of them.
The inquiry might come into even more if the children wonder if family members have similar finger prints, or if larger children have larger finger prints – or any other question that they might have ideas about and want to test.
Tommy,
there’s great opportunity to visit fair testing as the children explore how the shadows change.
Do you have a room that you can make sufficiently dark for this to work? At BCO I have to move into a darker theatre space when I want to do this type of light and shadow work.
Do you have a scenario that the question “what makes a shadow?” would fit into, similar to the story of Moonbear’s Shadow by Frank Asch that we meet in Module 2. This would make a clear start to the inquiry framework structure of the activity.
You have allowed for children wondering and exploring as they play with the torch and objects – this is similar to ESERO29
They can then make a prediction about a starter question that interests them. A child might have noticed that multi-LED torches make overlapping shadows, and might predict how a shadow would look if only one torch LED was shining. This can be quite open for the children to explore – and the key aspect of this type of inquiry activity is for the children to develop science content understanding through comparing what they think will happen to what actually happens.
An older class could look at the angle of the light, and how does that change the length of the shadow. This could link to the position of the Sun in the sky.
Tommy,
introduce moon phases as a “next step” if your class is interested, but bear in mind that phases of the Moon isn’t explicitly mentioned in the Irish primary curriculum, so treat it as case of light illuminating a 3-D object and how that determines what we see.
Have you suggestions for a moon themed song or for the story about the Moon?
Would you use the word bank as outlined in ESERO 22?
Katie – if you’d like some space with your weather, did you know that the weather station aboard the Phoenix landes on Mars was a thermostat and a tell-tale bob that could wave in the wind!
Current missions also share their weather reports:
https://mars.nasa.gov/layout/embed/image/mslweather/
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/hows-the-weather-on-mars-nasa-mars-report/
Brid,
what have you found when using different sizes balloons? The physics is quite interesting, as described in this video:
A prediction of “A larger balloon has more air, so will have more thrust force, so will go fast. A smaller balloon has less air, so has less thrust force, so will go slower and less distance.” is actually incorrect!
A nice description of the forces involved is here: https://www.iop.org/explore-physics/at-home/episode-7-rocket-balloon
an enthusiastic presenter of this is here: