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Do you have a favourite one Catherine? As a fellow Canadian I love the all! but particularly the Chris’ Kitchen ones like this: https://youtu.be/AZx0RIV0wss,
We hope you will register events with spaceweek.ie — each year space week is always held between the 4th and the 10th of October, just before Maths Week.
You can register your planned activities here: http://www.spaceweek.ie/, there are no requirements for the whole school to be involved, but it would be great if they were!
Stellarium is great with a class – just try to get the room as dark as possible to be able to see the screen.
You can turn off the atmosphere with Stellarium – and then it completely shows what is up in the sky in the daytime.
Do you have a link to the poem? I tried googling it, but found poems written by children with that title.
The Moon is a great way into astronomy and space for children – have you a particular way you would like the children to record the moon phases? Would you start with the daytime moon at 3rd quarter and have a class observation?
Mayo Dark Skies have a Moon Observing Log that could be adapted for younger children: https://mayodarkskypark.ie/discover/the-moon, perhaps by putting in the suggested times that the children might look for the Moon – ie look for the Full Moon and the crescent Moon at sunset or sunrise, look for the 1st quarter moon in the afternoon, look for the 3rd quarter moon in the morning.
Hi Sinéad – a few years ago we worked with the National Children’s Choir and Jack L to do a Bowie video: https://youtu.be/xBZ034GHM4Q
Do you have a link to your class’s song?
thanks for sharing the mind-map – don’t forget to add to it / modify it etc as you progress through this course.
Welcome Nora – there are plenty of 2nd class teachers around in the forum, with a wealth of ideas and experiences that they are sharing. I like the Moon footprints as an engaging space fact – and even more, I like the cakes that can be made with that as the topping:
It would be interesting to ask your space enthusiasts about the image Picture of Solar System”
from the details in it, I would guess it was made pre-2000, given this from NASA:
Number of Moons in the Solar System (12/18/2001)
Mercury – 0 moons
Earth – 1 moon
Mars – 2 moons
Jupiter – 28 moons
Saturn – 30 moons
Uranus – 20 moons
Neptune – 8 moons
Pluto – 1 moonEven though astronomy is an ancient science – humans have been trying to work out how object in space are related and move…, there is always something new to be discovered.
My college text book, published in 1982 “Introduction to Planetary Geology” was out of date by the time I used it in 1985! It references the 16 satellites of Jupiter.
Marie – have you tried the activity from Fizzing and Alien Slime?
Start with a solid by giving each group of children an ice cube in a snack size zip-locked bag. Ask the students how they can change it to a liquid. Remind them not to take it out of the bag, tear the bag or put the bag in their mouths. They will have to find a source of heat. Tell the children to come to see you when they have a liquid.
I think that could lead to some interesting discussions amongst the children — and is preparation for much later ideas about physical changes vs chemical changes.
Hi Teresa – you might share this with your son: https://www.esa.int/kids/en/learn/Our_Universe/Planets_and_moons/Venus
and sulphur compounds are the ones that make that nasty eggy smell.
see also this article about the smell of some other planets: https://www.science.org.au/curious/space-time/smells-space-planets
Celine, it is great to hear from your actual experience — I have used the measuring of the string as part of the learning, but that was with a slightly older crowd. Always adapt the activities to put the focus where you need it.
Ruth – you have the inquiry process spot on. Children can explore the rocket mouse, find out how it works, then ask their own questions to deepen their science understanding.
Measuring the force actually applied can be quite tricky – which opens up further questions for exploration. And, from experience, after a few launches, the mouse gets stepped on, flattened – and then– does it fly as well as it did?
Joanne, there’s definitely a need to spread these activities out – and I like how you have planned to engage the children’s interest with photos, stories and videos. The children could compare their own rockets to rocket mouse, using whichever criteria they think is most important –is “having a rocket shape” more important than “it flies upwards” for example.
This link should work for you Mary: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_jB5a664Qe5SNNcrGrZCLssZqP-RyruA/view?usp=sharing
