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Aisling, I like how you have planned for the children’s observations of weather to link to climate and seasons- and have it planned for an extended set of observations over the year.
I grew up in Canada, with a continental climate and it was very very different to Ireland.
Christine – Each class showing their work would fit right into the DPSM Awards of Maths and Science Excellence.
I hope you and your colleagues will participate in both Space Week in 2022, and in the awards programme.
Christine – I think it is important to make that science link to materials used to make buildings. Are there any new buildings in your area? Weekly trips to see the site could be valuable, showing change over time and the construction techniques.
Rockets really are a great theme – and the Queen of the Rockets is Jane Shimizu – you can see her school’s posts here.
Roisin – a tiny feature of many of the model rockets that I have used, is that they fly better if they are slightly “nose-heavy” – a little bit of extra weight at the nose moves the centre of gravity away from the fins, and they are more stable.
You could test that with rocket mouse — do they fly better if they have a little wodge of masking tape inside the tip of the cone?
Roisin – I like the game you have included, and the actions reinforce the maths — a semi-detached = two houses, so has two people.
I’m all in favour of Space Month! You could hold some of the very maths-y activities for Maths week, which is only a week after Space Week….
If your theme is the Space Station – would you make your own junk model of the ISS?
There are also a couple of ESA videos about Mars, with Paxi as our guide.
and
which also discusses, how do we know that something is alive?
Angela – comparing the two rockets is great — and there are plenty of inquiries that the children could carry out with each rocket alone.
The foam rocket lends itself to — will it go further if I stretch the rubber band more? will it go further if I aim it straight up, or horizontally? will it go where I aim it if it has no fins? etc…
Claire – seems like you have something for everyone! I hope your colleagues think this is a good plan and I look forward to seeing your school registered with http://www.spaceweek.ie/add/.
Darragh — the question about how far away the stars are is really interesting- and the ways in which we have worked out the distance to stars is pretty complicated.
You can try these three-D images of stars from GAIA, I managed to get them to look 3-D from my computer screen.
Síle, I agree with you about spreading this topic out over the course of a week, and connecting their imaginations with their science understanding is a great way to explore this topic.
Síle – this is a simple activity, but it is so effective. I was watching my shadow this morning – it was extremely long at sunrise, and I was thinking that in winter, with the later sunrise, this would be very effective to explore with children during school hours.
John – what activity on eclipses would you carry out? There is an ESERO activity for older classes that has the children model the Earth-Sun-Moon system. Just watch out for the small error on the names of the phases of the Moon (and bear in mind, phases of the Moon are not required in primary).