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Margaret,
that sounds like a super Design and Make, and I love the way you provided simple materials, and let the children think through all sort of possibilities without you constraining their ideas.
Sharing their trap at the end gives them the opportunity to discuss their science understanding and reflect, which is key to inquiry learning.
Hi Breeda,
Are you thinking of exploring the model of the earth as an orange and which way the people would stand from Gravity?
The diagram is from the ISS Education Kit, (Chapter 1 – page 11) where children are asked to draw raindrops falling on the children who are holding the umbrellas. This resource has some really nice additional background for teachers and suggestions for questions for the children to help them frame their thinking.
Mark,
the stars and beach of sand analogy has been wonderfully visualised by Randall Munroe (of XKCD) as
“Our Sun isn’t a grain of sand on a soft galactic beach; instead, the Milky Way is a field of boulders with some sand in between.”
Breeda,
here is a video (and article) about this!
https://www.watchmojo.com/articles/how-long-would-it-take-to-cruise-the-solar-system
and you might like to explore this scale model of the solar system
https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
Shauna – you saw the northern lights! Lucky you, we were so clouded out here in Cork!
There are range of activities on the Northern Lights in the PolarStar project that BCO participated in a few years ago. I had help with the translations (not having any Irish myself), so you might find them useful with Irish as well as English.
The suggested age range is older than this course’s focus, but adaptable.
See: https://polar-star.ea.gr/content/northern-lights-0
Hi Celine!
Roaring Rockets is on my so-so list, since the glossary at the end includes some rather scarily-bad science.
Its a useful prompt for inquiry, but please skip over the “gravity boots” that ‘grip the ground’ to stop you floating off the Moon.
Shauna,
thanks for sharing such a detailed clear plan for 1st class. May I share it more widely in the end of course summary that I produce?
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.
