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Rachel – the frozen glove and trying to melt it is a great activity. Particularly since there are so many factors that will affect the melting, the children really have to think which ones are actually affecting it. The glove that gets handled the most tends to melt pretty fast — because it is heated up by the children’s own hands!
Aisling – you can see a great visualisation that compares the planets on twitter: https://twitter.com/i/status/1519023430053818368
I really like how you have taken the great trigger: get teddy across the lake, and worked in a science investigation on floating, and a design and make with the best material too. It could be that the ‘best floater’ cannot be made into a boat shape – so its a great real world scenario.
Patrice – if you wanted to make permanent aliens, then one of the air drying clay products might be perfect. I’ve used model magic and ‘jumping clay’ (see videos at: https://www.youtube.com/c/JumpingclayCoUk/videos). This can add colour mixing into the modelling.
Eimear, I like the way the science has been brought into this activity by linking the features of the planet to the aliens. It’s an imaginative activity, but rooted in high level science thinking.
Michael – the crater activity lends itself to a wide range of questions and predictions, which are essential for children’s learning in an inquiry approach.
Note that phases of the Moon are not part of the primary curriculum, so keep the emphasis on the light from the Sun that is lighting up the Moon and how the Moon itself is casting shadows that stop us seeing all of the side that is facing us.
Eve, is there a particular science emphasis that you would include in this topic? Child centred inquiry, as supported by the DPSM ESERO Framework for Inquiry should give the children a chance to pose questions, make predictions based on their science understanding and then test out their understanding with an investigation.
The Space Centre could have a requirement to be strong/ or light weight / or have windows … and then the children could work with different materials and explain why they would be suitable or not, before building the station.
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.
