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For Dolores, Padraig and Laura.
ESA launched a new rocket yesterday!
https://youtu.be/uCf-mN7ABWk?si=uJ0r5hdzoAfIKZSP
and Irish company Réaltra worked on the cameras that helped the livestream!
Katie- Jo,
what a super context for the children to engage with for this Design and Make activity. Teddy’s boots are a great prompt and I think it is just brilliant that you take a pic of Teddy on the farm at the end!
I am still on the endless hunt for a decent waterproof jacket that doesn’t leave me too sweaty when I wear it, but I guess Teddy doesn’t sweat so he’ll be ok.
Hi Emma,
thanks for sharing this detailed and useable plan. I like how you use “why do you think…” questions to help the children to articulate their science understanding.
Thanks also for sharing the space dust fact- it sent me on a “lets find out more” quest:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230915-the-cosmic-dust-sitting-on-your-roof
Hi Corinna,
you have identified one of the key ideas of the framework for inquiry -which is to let the children engage with the ideas that you want them to learn before carrying out the investigation. In this case, playful time with the balls may lead to the investigation quite naturally – as you model “I wonder…” statements and let the children tell you what they wonder, and what they think is going on.
Is this the play? https://www.outoftheark.co.uk/christmas-with-the-aliens.html
Your playful take on aliens is super – may I share with teachers in my end of course summary?
Rachel – for the child who isn’t confident in their own drawing, you can use the folded paper and each person add a different part of the alien – simple but effective.
Padraig,
have you much experience with map work with 2nd class? I was doing some simple map activity with my Brownie Guides (ages 8-10 – most are 1st-4th class) and was surprised at how complicated they found the maps. They found it very difficult to give directions to a place from a map of the local area (that we had walked through the previous week) -I wonder if they are driven so much that they don’t have a sense of turning left or right at junctions to be able to navigate.
Near me, the Tidy Town associations have local maps and that is what we use. I have also generated my own map of the local area from Open Street Map, which is copyright free: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/51.89989/-8.40296
Dolores,
If you’ve made the balloon rockets before, which type of string etc have you found the best. Balloon rockets have always been challenging for me, and I only cracked them last year when I went vertically with fishing line, with a weight on the base to keep the line taut.
Deirdre,
you have shared a detailed activity plan, and I am sure that your enthusiasm for the topic will make it exciting for your own class. And isn’t Cape Canaveral neat! (I went there first as a 13 year old, with my family in Florida for Christmas).
Hi Michelle,
this is indeed a very exciting event, with lots of active learning. I like to make groups of 3 with one bottle between them – that way each child has lots of goes, but there are not to many mice in the air at the same time, and the noise is a bit less!
Hi Olivia,
giving 2nd class children a taste of the 3rd/4th class ideas of
investigate the pushing force of water / design and make a boat or raft using an increasing variety of materials, tools and craft-handling skills.
can be super. I tend to use just paper, and see if they can work out the 1st requirement of not letting the water in! Paper is also lightweight, so will float pretty much. Since the science behind why boats float is quite tricky (getting into the volume of the displaced water provides an upwards force called buoyancy) – I tend to like to make rafts first that pretty much float on the surface.
Muireann,
the Geography Curriculum names 2 constellations in the exemplars for 5th and 6th class – the Great Bear and Pole Star, Orion.
So please try to point those out from an early age. Ursa Major is visible all year round, and children can use the Spaceweek.ie resource (https://www.spaceweek.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Draw-Your-Own-Constellation.pdf) to make their own shape for the Plough, Orion is visible in the early evening in January – April.
Older children might explore how the position of the Plough tells you the time of night, with this Plough Clock.
Padraig,
you have described a detailed Engage set of activities for children around the theme of the solar system. Children should be encouraged to share what they know and to pose simple questions around what they would like to know more about.
The formation of the solar system is an area of science that still has lots of research going on. What I find interesting is that astronomy is such an observational science -we have to look and see, then try to work out why it is the way we see it, then make predictions that fit within that theory and then go looking for evidence of that prediction.
Here are 18 unanswered questions about the solar system.
Clodagh,
we’ve used the make the Moon and the Earth from playdoh for years — often with older children. It is really interesting to see them trying to work out how to divide the playdoh evenly. If they don’t start to figure it out, I suggest rolling a cylinder and then using a ruler to measure the length and to cut off the smallest amount.
Very open maths activity.
I adapted it from here: https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/classroom/scales.shtml
which also has the whole solar system to scale.
The mind blower for most children (and their teachers) is putting the scale Earth-Moon to the correct distance apart (at the same scale). Most have the Moon very close to the Earth – usually no more than 3 Earth diameter’s away, so when they are told it is 30 Earth diameter’s away there really is some head scratching.
Sarah,
to have this more closely match the science curriculum (Materials >Materials and Change > Heating and Cooling 1st/2nd class)
become aware of and investigate the suitability of different kinds of clothes for variations in temperature
recognise that some fabrics keep us warmer than others
design and make or assemble an outfit for someone who is going on holiday to a very warm or cold placethe children could be enabled to test the various clothing to see if it keeps them warm or cool. This can be linked to heat transfer – but heat transfer is mostly covered in 5th and 6th class, so I’d keep this simple.