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Catherine – the tactile Moon is lovely to create — and could be done as a group project if you printed the templates out using “create poster” setting on your printer, in this screen shot I made the image 400% bigger and this produces 12 separate bits of the Moon for the children to work on. If you change the % you can get a different number of sections.
Michael – the ESERO activity 48 – How Far Can You Jump was written for 3rd/4th class children, and can be a nice stimulus for inquiry learning. The children could carry out their own inquiry about the different distances that the children in the class could jump – and perhaps simulate the effects of a larger gravity by holding something really heavy when they try to jump.
Aoife- this is a great design and make activity, ‘building’ on this Design a Bridge from primaryscience.ie. Here, the prediction part of carry out the investigation becomes Plan, and they can explain what they know about different materials and choose from them to make their bridge.
If you choose to make available only the materials around the classroom, then it might just be a paper bridge, and then the design of how the paper is folded/taped becomes more important.
Aoife – I tried shadow plays with a group of 8-10 year-olds and they found it more difficult than I had expected. I thought that using nursery rhymes, with the story given to them would help and images that they might use – but they got absolutely sidetracked by tiny details of the shadow puppets and it took forever!!
We had made up a shadow theatre, with a sheet over a large cardboard frame so that they could place the puppets between the light and sheet and we could view it from the front: https://youtu.be/nK4d9g9WQUU
Ailis, there is a lovely bank of images of the planets in this ESA resource- Our Solar System – Journey to other celestial objects | Teach with space PR01,
and a video with ESA’s mascot Paxi: https://youtu.be/mibxJwpennU
Children could be asked to describe what they see in terms of size, colour, shapes, as well as naming the planets.
Ailis, I like how you have given a specific context, and used a waterproof material to make the house. An extension activity might be to explore ways in which to make something waterproof. Children could explore a combo roof – a strong material, covered with a light weight waterproof material – and discuss how housing uses waterproof on the outside, and strong on the inside.
Sharlene – can you share the link to the video? -there are lots out there called “Fun with Magnets”
I’m thinking about where I find magnets at home — mostly on the fridge, on the sliding door at my Dad’s front screen door (in Canada – not an Irish thing!), on my son’s wooden train sets to link the carriages together, inside the radio (to make the speaker move) … what would you expect the children to come up with?
Ciara – I recently came across this resource from RNLI about sun safety at the beach. Might be nice to do at the end of the school year, just before the summer holidays.
Paula – so much scope for integration, including early mathematical activities, as the children sort the planets by size, by colour…
Shirley – I have a weakness for asking children to draw where they see the Sun rising and setting from their own homes … I did it as a student in middle school in Canada (aged about 10), and still remember how cool it seemed to me that the Sun rose in a slightly different place each day, and by the end of the week, at a clearly different part of the horizon! This was in the 1970s and I still have a photo I took of the Sun setting behind my house.
Paula – I love the link to water safety! I did an activity with an informal group, play acting a scene at the beach, and asking the children to choose an object that they could use to help someone who was in difficulty in the water. I had a range of things that you would normally take to the beach – and they had to choose one, show how they would use it safely and then explain why it was a good choice.
The RNLI have superb resources at : https://rnli.org/youth-education/education-resources/lower-primary
Sandra — one mis-conception that older children have (this is from my time teaching 12 year olds), is that you have to boil water to have it evaporate. Could you ask the children: have you ever seen clothing drying outside on the line? What happened to the water that was in the clothing? Did the clothing ever get hot enough to be ‘boiling’?
Children could then think through what is happening and ask their own questions about where the water went. Ie – I think the water went into the air, but it happens faster if the wet clothing is outside on a warmer day –> then test this.
Welcome Paula, I hope you will find the space themed activities suitable for your infants. I do recommend taking the time to look over the forum posts – there are a lot of ideas and expansions of activities being shared.
Lots of us followed him on social media last time he was aboard the ISS – this is typical: https://twitter.com/cmdr_hadfield/status/303602636899352576
and he brought out a book of his photographs: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/247235/you-are-here-by-chris-hadfield/9780345814944
