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Karen, could you include some science thinking – and ask the children to relate senses to body features? It’s a stretch – but could access:
become aware of the role of each sense in detecting information about the environment and in protecting the body
from Science>Living Things> Myself for 1st/2nd class.
Hi Nell – welcome to the course. There are plenty of 1st class teachers here, so please do check over the forum posts for lots of ideas and suggestions for books/videos and great activities.
I tidied up the formatting in your post – to avoid carrying it over if you have written your post in another document, right click in the forum response box and then choose paste as text.
Your inquiry activity touches on a few areas of science — the idea of light travelling in a straight line, of objects that are opaque vs translucent vs transparent, as well as moving the Sun/light source.
You might want to spread these out over a few lessons and let the children really play with the torches and shadows.
Eilis – you have a lot of concepts in this activity set – how much time do you think this will take? Will you split it across a few weeks?
I have done the modelling the earth-moon-sun with adults and second level students – and it is quite complicated. How would you simplify it for young children, particularly with respect to axial tilt?
I do like the inclusion of the polar day and night – I think that is essential for children to appreciate how the Earth actually does move around the Sun.
Aoife – the rocket mouse might be a bit simple for 2nd class- the balloon rockets might give them greater scope for explaining the forces and the gas escaping out the end of the balloon being like the gas that launches a real rocket.
It could also link to Air and Water Power or Moving Air from primaryscience.ie
Keith – how will you draw out the children’s thinking about the sun and shadows? Would you ask the children to try to model the path of the Sun as they make shadows in the classroom?
Keith – the three little pigs have a purpose to their houses– to make a house strong enough that it won’t blow down. Would you include different materials and why they might be good/bad for making a house?
This could be explored with the sand — is sand a good material to make a shape that won’t get blown away?
Karen – I wonder if you could have lots of toy polar bears, and the children could make a landscape scene with different colours in it, place the toy polar bears and then other children have to try to spot the toys from a distance.
Georgia – have you heard of the Fermi Paradox? In essence it states– space is big, and there are many stars, so there should be lots of alien life out there… so why haven’t we seen any??
Would we actually recognise alien life if we saw it? Does all life have things in common? There were experiments done on Mars in the 1970s that are still being argued about!
Maths trails are great — there is a super guide to making a maths trail from Maths Week. The children could take the photos of a certain place along the trail and then you and your colleagues could work out a maths questions or activity to go with that location.
Alexandra — by changing ordering the planets you are actually hitting on one of the newer theories about how the solar system formed. Known as the Nice model (for the city in France) it suggest that the outer planets changed positions in the early solar system. It’s just a theory, widely accepted, but with some issues.
Fiona – how much fun to go on an alien hunt – would you actually follow bits of slime? I once tried to make a scent trail — with not much success– but that could be an option.
You might make a maths trail – using a simple code with steps/directions to travel – perhaps written in “alien language” – although this might be better for 2nd class.
Here is the story, read by the author. Planets are an interesting topic for children (and for this astronomy-space mad adult!), but don’t worry if they don’t learn the names of the planets. Knowing that they are different from stars is important, and they only show up as a curriculum learning outcome for 5th and 6th class in Geography.