Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Aoife – someone here will chime in with suggestions! I like how you have planned to extend the ideas of aliens into art, modelling, role play etc. There is a video game that is rather oddly called: An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs, I don’t think it is for children – but it shows how pervasive the ideas of aliens are in media.
There is also this list of all the aliens in the Men in Black movie franchise.
Shona – the NASA Moon overview is superb: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/overview/,
great images, all in one place. Thanks for reminding me of it.
Ailis – I like how you have planned for the children to identify an activity that they might do a different times of the year. This is very much part of the Geography strand, but designing clothing with different materials brings in the Science skills so nicely.
Ciara – you have structured a lovely flow of learning — do try to include the opportunity for the children to ask their own questions and support them to work out ways in which they might look for answers with the materials you have available. The vaseline activity might have them wondering — does the ‘waterproofing’ work the same if it goes on a furry surface? If you have some fur fabric that you don’t mind getting all vaseline-y, then they can find out.
Bingo — I knew I had put it in a spaceweek resource — and it just shook loose in my brain:
https://gitikapartington.com/training/warm-up-of-the-month/
It’s linked in the Mission to the Moon activity booklet.
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/8tlXsljR/aliens-in-space_std.mp4
Karen – if you choose one of the simpler rockets (rocket mouse, or for an older class- the straw rocket) then the children can dive quite deeply into trying to improve how well the rocket launches.
The preparations for launch can be a lovely activity of describing what the astronauts might need, and how it can all fit into a small space. You can find out more about that at this resource – Humans in Space – from Science Week 2021.
Lovely set of activities — may I share more widely on spaceweek.ie as part of the ‘summer summary’? Similar to this one from last year: http://www.spaceweek.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/SpaceWeekJunior-1.pdf
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.
Ciara: please register these events for your class at spaceweek.ie and plan to carry them out between 4 and 10 October. Any that you don’t get around to finishing can be used for Science Week in November 😉
