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Ciara – I recently came across this resource from RNLI about sun safety at the beach. Might be nice to do at the end of the school year, just before the summer holidays.
Paula – so much scope for integration, including early mathematical activities, as the children sort the planets by size, by colour…
Shirley – I have a weakness for asking children to draw where they see the Sun rising and setting from their own homes … I did it as a student in middle school in Canada (aged about 10), and still remember how cool it seemed to me that the Sun rose in a slightly different place each day, and by the end of the week, at a clearly different part of the horizon! This was in the 1970s and I still have a photo I took of the Sun setting behind my house.
Paula – I love the link to water safety! I did an activity with an informal group, play acting a scene at the beach, and asking the children to choose an object that they could use to help someone who was in difficulty in the water. I had a range of things that you would normally take to the beach – and they had to choose one, show how they would use it safely and then explain why it was a good choice.
The RNLI have superb resources at : https://rnli.org/youth-education/education-resources/lower-primary
Sandra — one mis-conception that older children have (this is from my time teaching 12 year olds), is that you have to boil water to have it evaporate. Could you ask the children: have you ever seen clothing drying outside on the line? What happened to the water that was in the clothing? Did the clothing ever get hot enough to be ‘boiling’?
Children could then think through what is happening and ask their own questions about where the water went. Ie – I think the water went into the air, but it happens faster if the wet clothing is outside on a warmer day –> then test this.
Welcome Paula, I hope you will find the space themed activities suitable for your infants. I do recommend taking the time to look over the forum posts – there are a lot of ideas and expansions of activities being shared.
Lots of us followed him on social media last time he was aboard the ISS – this is typical: https://twitter.com/cmdr_hadfield/status/303602636899352576
and he brought out a book of his photographs: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/247235/you-are-here-by-chris-hadfield/9780345814944
Shirley – what a lovely trigger and context to explore floating and sinking. And so many opportunities to discuss the waterproof-ness of the materials, their weight, their flexibility etc.
Eimear – magnetism is definitely one of those topics that lends itself to discovery by exploration. I’ve noticed that some rectangular fridge magnets are made with north/south on the sides that make contact with the fridge – so a rectangular magnet that you might expect to have N-S at the ends (like the image),
actually has the poles along the faces.
This is something that the children should have the chance to explore.
Thanks for sharing the book link Lisa. Can you describe:
I’ve seen another lovely idea where the children work in threes to create portraits of their face.
a little more?
Emma – with a 2nd class would you want to extend the music to include a bit of Holtz? https://www.classicfm.com/composers/holst/pictures/holsts-planets-guide/
When the children make a physical model of the solar system, would you ask them to have the planets at the appropriate relative distances? You could use the solar system walk to get the distances.
Irene – the Universe in Box booklet has many super activities, and the Spherical Earth set is one of my favourite.
Do you have an Earth Ball or will you use a ‘regular Earth globe’?
Observing the Moon is great– it can tie into weather observations – as in — “if it is cloudy in the day, we won’t be able to see the Moon.”
Sarah – I like they way you have planned a great trigger – the Sun ball – and how you will use it to get the children to wonder and question. Most children will tell you that you shouldn’t look at the Sun, but this activity with uv beads could leads to the children checking how well the “items would you need for a day in the sun?” actually protect from uv. They might ask and then check: does my T-shirt protect me from the uv? Do my sunglasses protect me from uv …
Irene – in the Materials>Materials and Change strand and strand units, children should
“– explore the effects of heating and cooling on everyday objects, materials and substances (Infants)
— explore the effects of heating and cooling on a range of liquids and solids (1st and 2nd)”I think adding in particle theory for children in junior classes is expecting too much. The animation from https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/resources/k-8/inquiryinaction/second-grade/heating-and-cooling.html refers to molecules and uses quite advanced language. This is something I would have used with students in second level.
There are some nice ideas in the activity, but they need to be adapted for the junior classes.
Great song choice there Sarah – I just played it out loud and got a “what on earth is that?” from the other side of the room!
Research tasks, like finding out about planets, can be inquiry based, particularly if the children choose a question that they would like to answer. Astronomy has always been an observational science. We can look at distant objects, and in the last 50 years have sent spacecraft to have closer looks at some of the nearer objects in our solar system, but we can’t ‘do an experiment’ on a planet! Instead, we ask questions and look for patterns in what we see and try to make predictions about what else we might see.