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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!
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.
Christine – have you seen Chris Hadfield’s photograph book: You Are Here? also described by Chris in this video, check out how lovely Ireland looks!
If the children have family abroad, you might ask them to find that location on a globe – and then ask them – which way up are the people there standing?
Angela – it’s great to use this a skills activity – close observation of its appearance is so valuable. I remember setting this for a class of 12 year olds – and one of them brought in her homework with the Moon drawn as a pie with 1/4 taken out of it. She’d heard the words 1st quarter and 3rd quarter but hadn’t realized that meant how far around the Earth the Moon was in its orbit! I made her observe again the next week!
Fiona, I like how you have centred this on the Sun’s daily motion causing shadows to move. I expect you would then allow plenty of exploration of shadows and how, in Ireland, we sometimes don’t see our shadows clearly due to cloudy weather.
If you have a drawing of a compass – you could make the sundial on the compass!
Nell – you have nicely included maths, PE and music. I know that the science of planets is tricky for young children, but you could include the different colours of the planets, and close observation of photographs (using the See, Think, Wonder approach to thinking skills) to help draw out what they notice and what they think might be different from one planet to another.
Aoife: here is the Moon seen this morning: https://photos.app.goo.gl/vkZHS7rAnuwxCF9Q7
and it will be last quarter around September 17 and again October 17, 2022.
The appearance of the Moon and the different shapes / craters / mare are all interesting to explore, and making a textured surface for the children to see how impacts make craters really lets them test out their understanding.
Do check different types of sand — if you use very fine playground sand, it is often too silky and runs rather than makes craters. You could try some coarser builder’s sand, although when I buy it, it is often very wet and needs to be dried out before use.
Karen – the Planets activity was designed as the first in the 80-strong activity set from ESERO – and is ideally suited for Junior Infants. I agree that having the children physically demonstrate the motion of the planets with the hula hoops can help to bring the solar system to life.
If you wanted to stretch out the activity (literally!) you could ask children to move apart to demonstrate the spacing of the planets in the solar system – this spaceweek.ie resource has the distances.
Hi Claire, can you please check the access to your mind map – it is currently private to yourself.
Gravity and magnets are often compared – they both are attractive forces, although magnetism can also repel.
Be careful with the discussion about “I would start the lesson with a discussion about space and gravity. What happens to astronauts in space?” since a common misconception is that there is no gravity in space – whereas the more correct terminology is to describe the orbiting environment of astronauts on the ISS as being weightless or microgravity. As they orbit, they are falling towards to the Earth at the same speed as the space station – so they don’t feel the space station pushing on them.
Magnetic fields related to the Earth is great to explore, particularly if you can make a compass.
