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Justyne,
that’s a lovely way to access the 1st/2nd class Science, strand unit Light
• investigate the relationship between light and materials
sort materials according to whether or not they allow light through (transparent/ opaque)
explore materials that do not allow light to pass through (opaque) and thus form shadowsI’d leave out the translucent – save that for 3rd/4th class.
I take the Blackrock Castle StarDome out on the road a fair bit, and children are so fascinated by the bright projector and the clear shadows that they can make on the dome wall! Do you have a lovely dark room that you can use?
If not, consider a dark “tent” by draping light excluding fabric over a table and creating a dark play space for children to explore shadows.
Claire,
you’ve identified the very feature of inquiry learning that makes it so powerful – exploration of children’s assumptions and testing them to deepen science content understanding.
big things will sink, small things will float.
seems like a reasonable assumption – and when the children then explore, they will find that some big things float and some small things sink, so will have to develop new mental models to explain what they see.
Aoife,
rocket mouse is a great activity for young children – easy to make with lots of science underpinning the learning.
I’d tweak your outline slightly – let the children play with the rocket mice so that they see how they work (this is wonder and explore), then they can predict how the mice will fly when they change some aspect of the launch – ie “with a bigger bottle I think the mouse will go higher since there is more air to push it”
The investigation will then naturally follow as they check if their prediction was correct.
As I have described before, I once gave each child of a group of 3 a different colour mouse, then asked the whole class if one colour mouse was better at flying than another colour. So much discussion as they untangled the effect of person launching vs the colour.
Niamh,
we visit rockets as a theme in Module 5 – but you have given a detailed explanation of how inquiry activities can work. I find that if you have the straw right to the end of the rocket it gets “stuck” and if you just pull back a little, allowing for a small gap at the nose, then it works much better.
There is also an issue with the rocket fins being too close to the centre of gravity – so to offset the weight of the fins, add a little bit of weight to the nose – it works wonders!
A teacher resource that covers this background is at https://www.nasa.gov/stem-content/rockets-educator-guide/
and in particular at page 42. They suggest
In a gym or other room with a high ceiling,
launch rockets straight up next to a wall. Have
other students estimate the altitudes reached
by the rockets. Count the number of concrete
blocks the rocket reached and multiply by the
height of one block.Eimear,
I once used build a bridge with a group of 7-10 year old girls. We started with Amazing Triangles (new version) or this older version Maths Extension.
Each small group explored how the triangle shape was more stable by making a cube vs a pyramid.
Then I set the challenge to design a bridge that would hold our mascot – a stuffed toy red panda.
The panda destroyed every bridge!! The girls didn’t connect the ideas of the strength of the triangle to the structure of the bridge – and the newspaper we used just wasn’t strong enough as a sheet.
I learnt to allow more time and to be more active in my questioning of their design process.
Aoife,
I think you have two different child friendly rockets combined – the rocket mouse uses the template (a simple cone) and a milk bottle to launch – everything else is decoration. Children launch be squeezing the milk bottle.
The straw rocket is for slightly older children, and uses a rolled tube with a sealed nose and a straw that the children blow into.
Both are suitable for open ended investigations on the effects of force, air pressure etc.
Noelle,
if you start this activity when the Moon is at 3rd quarter you’ll be able to observe in the mornings when the children are at school. If you start at Full Moon (and the Moon was full on Friday/Saturday of last weekend), then the children would have to look very early in the morning before it sets or stay up to sunset. Easier to do in winter than summer!
Thanks for sharing a new to me book suggestion. It appears to have two titles – both “The Boy from Mars” (see: https://youtu.be/h4RYYiSvwLQ?si=-h5aiW9bXZ4bCEax) and “The Boy Who Went to Mars”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VNwvcj1PRs)
The story has no facts about Mars – so the children might want to use another source to feed into their Mars discussion – possibly by using Google Earth set to Mars to show the children what the surface of Mars looks like, or some of the images from the Mars resource.
Órla – that’s a lovely set of activities that build on a familiar item – food – in a novel environment.
Lots of opportunity to consider why astronauts need freeze dried food (it weighs less) – and the chance to look at how they recycle water on the ISS.
You might look at Space Picnic https://esero.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/UPDATED-Space-Picnic-2016-Final-1.pdf-1.pdf
or some of the UK Space Agency’s material on design a meal for Tim Peakes:
https://www.stem.org.uk/resources_new/library/resource/34997/food-texture
Hi Orla,
it was only today that I realised that this comparison comes from Genesis!
“as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.”
and appears in Hebrews (today’s reading).
Emily,
lots of opportunities for the children to develop their science understanding as part of the “next step” — and good idea to use flour instead of glitter (as I have done before — it really does go everywhere!).
Another exploration linked to this is the Space Week resource from 2020 – the bread and microbes is striking!
There’s a huge interest in Norah and her short flight to space – but did you know that Rosemary Coogan- born in Northern Ireland – has been selected and trained as an ESA astronaut?
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Astronauts/Rosemary_Coogan
Rohana,
would this Marvin and Milo activity suit your crew?
https://spark.iop.org/cloud-glass
It is a bit closer to how actual clouds form, and yet still an open ended activity.
Aoife,
this is just great- you have a familiar story to act as the prompt, with plenty of opportunity for discussion and for the children to wonder and explore. The investigate part follows the “design & make” variant of the inquiry framework, so the children will Explore | Plan | Make | Evaluate their ladders. By referencing what the predicted vs how it actually worked they can deepen their understanding of materials and forces. Nice job.
Thanks for sharing the video suggestion – not sure where they got the ‘fact’ of 100 billion planets in our galaxy – this is very much an area of active research.
If you’d like to share actual images of the planets rather than the cartoon versions, I’d use the ESA resource: https://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/edu/PR01_EN_Our_Solar_System.pdf