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Colette,
I just love Chris Hadfield too – a fellow Canadian! (here is the story of his moustache! and another account of how many astronauts have moustaches)
I agree with you on aiming just for a basic sense of forces for infants. If they can grasp the idea that the air from the milk jug pushes the mouse rocket up – that’s plenty.
Lauren,
it sounds like you have a lot of experience in engaging your infants in the topic and building on their understanding from sources of light to differences between day and night and hence to shadows.
Linking the fact that night is just the Earth’s shadow is a key concept, made clearer by letting children see shadows in their own environment. Perhaps it is the series of rather dull days that we can get in Ireland that make shadow days all the more special (as the Sun has just come out in Cork!).
Aideen,
thanks for sharing your classroom experiences and how you have linked different activities into a coherent thread.
It occurs to me that a variant of hot and cold / how do you feel, what are you wearing… could be achieved by collecting the grocery magazines and identifying food that you eat when it is hot vs food that you eat when it is cold, or items that you would use in the summer (bbq, sun parasol, camping gear, swimming pool) vs winter (ski clothes, e….)
These are online, so you could even save the images and share this on the whiteboard
https://leaflets.aldi.ie/view/105160728/
Summer treats: https://leaflets.aldi.ie/view/765436005/
Dunnes website even has a section right now for Summer! https://www.dunnesstoresgrocery.com/sm/delivery/rsid/258/categories/summer/summer-picnic-id-54681
Colette,
I wasn’t familiar with the Red Planet Report – is it this one? http://redplanet.asu.edu/
and for the Mars Webcam – this one? https://blogs.esa.int/vmc/
I’ve tended to go for Google Mars (from Google Earth) and zoom into the images from Spirit and Opportunity rovers (both no longer functioning).
This is the view:
The latest rover images can be found at https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/
and we produced a 2nd level image making guide to work with these images for Space Week, it is at https://www.spaceweek.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/SolarSystemImages.pdf
Niamh,
as a patchworker, I love stars – they are easy to make from triangles and look amazing on quilts.
Depending on your local area, you may have a local quilter, and I bet they have made a star quilt! (https://www.adventuresofadiymom.com/2024/06/30-star-quilt-blocks-patterns.html)
While looking for a particular star quilt book that I have used I came across this gentle story: Elizabeth’s Constellation Quilt, by Olivia Fu
Tracy,
Katie and the Starry Night is a wonderful story – I have shared it with my colleagues who hosted our Space Art session last year.
https://www.spaceweek.ie/events/space-art-with-bco-van-gogh/
I’m also enthralled myself with the astronaut drawing – I need to find my sharpies!
Elaine,
it looks like your class will have a busy week for Space Week. Would you hold this over the official time of Space Week, which is always 4 to 10 October, or would you run this later in the school year?
If you do plan for some or all of this in early October, please do register it as an ‘event’ at spaceweek.ie
I’m a big fan of “Rocket Golf.” After the children have made their rockets (foam ideally), they should plan out a ‘golf’ hole, with a tee, a fairway and a hole for the rocket to aim at. Children can compete for the lowest score over the hole by firing their rocket, running to where it landed, then firing again until it reaches the hole, which can be a bucket or hula hoop.
Different groups might survey the school grounds and set their holes up to be different pars based on different lengths, or the use of trees as obstacles.
Nicola,
Stellarium is a powerful tool and children can use it on their own. We have used it to show the effects of light pollution and to give children a scavenger hunt of objects to find. A similar hunt is here: https://pacificsciencecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cah-sky-search.pdf
With older students we have used it to plan observing sessions (similar to this: https://www.schoolsobservatory.org/sites/default/files/discover/stemclubs/secondary/NSO-Secondary-Silver-S4-PlanningObs.pdf)
We produced a guide to using Stellarium to find Messier Objects for Space Week 2023, see here: https://www.spaceweek.ie/space-week-resource-pack-2023/
And, it is part of our outreach StarDome experience, where participants are seated in the inflatable dome with Stellarium projected onto the interior of the Dome.
Chloe,
I really like your outline, this touches on parts of SESE Geography for Infants as well as leading towards 1st/2nd class Science>Materials begin to explore how different materials may be used in the construction of homes suited to their environments.
A variant of children drawing what they see that I have done, is to have photos of objects in the immediate area and have the children try to find them.
I really like your idea of comparison of aerial images of other villages. They could be within Ireland, or perhaps of other places that the children have visited / come from. I grew up in Canada, so like to share images of Canada in winter.
Niamh,
this is a lovely set of activities on the theme of aliens, touching so many parts of the curriculum. May I share it more widely at the end of the course in the summary document I produce each year?
(see these previous ones: https://www.spaceweek.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/SpaceWeekJunior_2023.pdf)
Grace,
shadow puppets are great fun, but I was surprised at how difficult it was for my Brownie Guides (aged 7 to 10). We used nursery rhymes and shapes to match (the cow jumped over the Moon etc). They had about 30 minutes to cut out, practice with a shadow theatre made from a large cardboard box and then present – and they needed way more time!
https://www.thepetitpelican.com/blogs/blog/how-to-make-a-shadow-puppet-theatre-at-home
Kayleigh,
I’m not familiar with that book, a quick search turned up this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51612747-the-little-girl-who-dared-to-dream
and this:
I like the constellation of the child’s name at the end of the story.
Planet images may help the children create their own version. NASA produced some fun Exoplanet posters which could spark the children into creating a travel brochure for their own planet.
Fiona,
Would this site that includes a video from TG4 weather forecast by useful for your class?
Aine,
I really like your idea of the children sharing what Marvin and Milo have prompted them to discover.
There is a book version if you have children who’d like to immerse themselves!
