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Valerie,
you have outlined a detailed series of activities, and named specific books – which I really appreciate.
I like how you have planned for gathering information at the start so that children do have concrete facts that they can incorporate into their understanding, and then you plan for active inquiry on what makes craters big or small etc.
Great stuff.
Sinead – so not in July 🙂
I like your final activity of art by making a big Sun. You could refer back to that over the whole year as you look at other space ideas – and relate to the role the Sun has in the solar system and to life on Earth.
Valerie,
I’m kicking myself that I didn’t take a picture of a galaxy wall display that I once made with children. We all created one or more spatter star paintings on black card, then arranged them with denser regions and sparser regions to create a huge galaxy on the window. It was amazing and the children could see that stars make up galaxies.
Karen,
creating aliens from craft material is a great design and make task. If you wanted children to use their scientific understanding of living things, you could ask them to group the made aliens into families – or, for slightly older children – into ecosystems.
I have done this before, by asking — where would this alien live? it looks like it has big eyes, so is it like an owl that goes out at night? etc.
Valerie,
letting each group try out the activity in their own way is a natural way to bring fair testing into discussion. Can results be compared? Why or why not? This is the key to the “Sharing: Interpreting the data / results” part of the Investigation Stage of the Framework for Inquiry.
Mary – thanks for the heads up on the book, I’ll look out for it.
The open ended make a rocket fits so well with the Design & Make skills of the science curriculum, as they Plan, Make and Evaluate with everyday materials.
Hi Deirdre,
to make working models that can be tested, I’d suggest giving each child a fizzy tablet tube and then use the “pop rocket” idea.
If children just create rocket shapes from junk art then it will be hard for them to launch.
Children could find out if warm water is better than cold, if two tablets are better than one. Caution – you won’t know when these are going to launch, so stand back!
Ashling,
you have outlined a lovely set of cross curricular activities that involve research and arts about Space as a theme.
To include science inquiry you might want to see what theories the children hold about why the solar system is the way it is – and perhaps help them find simple ways to explore some aspects of that.
So, if they find that the hottest planet is Venus, they might wonder if that is because it is close to the Sun – and how does being close to a heat source affect how warm you are? – simple inquiry.
or they might wonder if it is because it has a thick atmosphere — so how does wearing more clothes make you feel?
Áine,
Leo is great – I often show it inside our portable planetarium – and am told that it looks like a computer mouse.
You can review this video that one of my former colleagues created in 2020 – it outlines the difference between asterisms and constellations (using Stellarium).
Elaine,
there a few portable planetarium providers in the country.
In the Dublin area try Big Bear Planetarium, Armagh Planetarium also travel. In the west try Exploration Dome and we (BCO) cover the south with our StarDome.
You can replicate it to a certain degree by using Stellarium with a projector onto the biggest wall you can find in a room that you can make fully dark.
BCO have also recently been making D.O.M.E.s with schools – out of cardboard. You can see the details and how-to here.
Thanks for sharing these links Rebecca.
Is the Sun this one? https://wowscience.co.uk/resource/diy-sun-science/
This links to a free app from Lawrence Hall of Science (who are fab) for iPad.
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/diy-sun-science/id836712493
I checked and you can also get it for iPhone and Android at
and that also has pdfs that you can download for some of the activities. I like that fact that they have ages on the activities, so some of the age 7 and up could be used.
Sharon,
the maths with the families of aliens is one my favourite parts of this.
Which aliens belong together? Make groupings based on colour of body, shape, height, number of eyes…
Find me an alien with more eyes than this one…
So many possibilities.
Lucy,
I like how you have planned to engage very young children with day and night and look at the observable features of day and night to start with.
You could add in Earth images that show the Earth during day and night – here is a lovely one from ESA
source: this tweet from ESA
You can get current images from Met Éireann here: https://www.met.ie/latest-reports/satellites/world-visible or direct from EUMETSAT here: https://www.eumetsat.int/real-time-imagery/earth-view
and a video from ESA is here:
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2013/12/From_night_to_day_to_night_again
