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Eilis – check carefully how you word:
act out this journey of the earth moving away or towards the sun over a yeAr
This is a common misconception for all ages – that summer is when we are nearer the Sun, and winter is when we are further away.
Seasonal change appears for 5th and 6th class, so we haven’t covered it in great detail, but see this video about seasonal change misconceptions, called A Private Universe.
Danika – I really like how you have based the design a Martian on the actual conditions of Mars.
When we thought the conditions were different (back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when some astronomers thought they saw Martian canals), there were newspaper reports on what the Martians were doing! Teacher article about this here.
Danika, I like how you have structured this activity to allow the children time to explore and play. The trigger story will get them wondering, and then they can investigate how to make the shadow move to different places around bear. The proportional bears from maths make a great addition to this activity.
Lyndsey, bear in mind that children in Infants are expected to:
identify and discuss the sun, the moon and stars
so keeping it simple as you have outlined is the key. As the module has described — the spherical nature of the Moon >> spherical nature of the Earth, so it is a great introduction.
Great fact Danika — I love the fact that the Moon is lit up by the Sun – and the crazy thing is that Moon rock is naturally quite dark — it if was as shiny as a mirror is, the Moon would be insanely bright in the sky!
Ashling – have you seen the author enthusiastically reading the story?
Claire – having the teacher think out loud is a great way to model and make explicit the thinking skills that you are trying to develop.
I agree with you about the alien passport — it’s great.
Emma – the way you have planned your questions will help the children bring their science understanding to this imaginative activity. Nice stuff.
Claire – that art is lovely. A similar project was run by Deirdre Kelleghan – called Deadly Moons. She describes it in this article and you can find the images at this link.
Darragh, I really like how you have based this on the children’s observations of the world around them! I travel to schools with our portable planetarium, and will often ask children which way their classroom faces– is it east/west/north/south. They often don’t know, so I’ll ask them: do they get the sunlight in the room in the morning (E), in the middle of the day (S), in the afternoon (W), or not at all (N)? Many of them haven’t ever thought through the changing position of the sun in the sky and how it affects the brightness of the room they are in!
I’ll also ask -which way does your bedroom / living room face? What time of day is it brightest in the room?
Julieanne – I like the engaging activity at the start — playing shadow tag is fun – and the children can learn by playing – they might notice that the shadow is only ever on one side of them, that the shadow touches them if they are standing on the ground, that the shadow is dark, and if your eyes are in someone else’s shadow, then you can’t see the Sun!
All of those could then be more formally explored in the classroom with torches.
Nell – rocket mouse is very straightforward, but fun for all young children, and really lets them explore what they think is making the mouse launch and how to get it to…. go higher, go further, land on a target etc.
They can explore – does mouse fly better with a tail, or without? with ears or without? and if you make the mice different colours – is the red mouse better than the blue mouse?
The straw rocket requires more fine motor skills – most 2nd class children can manage it but might need a bit of help with the rolling of the paper around the pencil.
Julieanne – what a lovely way to encourage imagination. You can encourage the children to apply their science thinking by evaluating their aliens in terms of the planets of the solar system – which planet might each alien come from? Are the conditions on that planet suitable for aliens? Is it too hot there? or too cold there? How might different aliens be suited to different habitats.
I’ve had children make foil aliens before- and we had a great time imagining which aliens would be found together – and which must be from different planets! The reasons they gave were great – and showed a high level of imagination combined with reasoning.