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You could also possibly use the foam javelins if they are available in the school and build a sort of space olympics into a PE lesson. A ball landing in some sand mimicking the landing on the craters of the moon! Space themed scavenger hunt could completed and again could be multi class level to allow that sort of differentiation and opportunity for peer learning.
Ideas using the Aistear methodologies in the Infant Classroom for Space Week:
Construction – Build own model space craft
Small World – mini alien characters – build the planet they are from.
Role-play – costumes for astronauts, rockets, characters from space stories, carry out roleplays of specific important events in space – e.g. moon landing.
Art – playdough, star art work, rockets, planets picturesAll of these activities could stem out of literacy activities and or lead into literacy activities such as diary keeping, space passport, postcards from space. Obviously with infants these could be templated and would be shared writing experiences. Or indeed it might be possible to link up with older classes and let the older pupils write the ideas of the younger pupils.
Music can be resource in all aspects of these lessons and I for one would definitely be using various scores from famous films and other songs synonymous with space to act as a stimulus for certain tasks throughout a Space Week.
These are all gorgeous ideas for exploration in the Infant classroom, Laura, and I am inspired to try some of them. Animal lessons are always a favourite and these would be no different! I love the extra questioning that you suggest Frances too.
There are truly many Online Resources that are accessible and suitable for the Infant classroom that I am very excited to share with my colleagues and make use of in the coming school year.
I really love the Astronomy picture of the Day as I think this opens up oral language discussion and awareness of the pupils of a lace within and beyond them. I think these pictures could be used in conjunction with music to do some creative writing work.
The characters of Marvin and Milo look super friendly to the Infant room. (My own 3 year old loved these when I was looking at them!!) I thought the spinning egg challenge was really cool and the Magic Balloon one. I also think that we could use just the characters themselves as a starting point for drama activities based on certain space topics.
I think ESA kids could be invaluable for planning and also for station teaching – the children could play games independently.
Linking in with the previous module I think Stellarium would be fabulous for lessons on stars.I would like to introduce a lesson on stars by playing some musical pieces that have stars in their titles or in the lyrics and ask the children what is the theme that links these pieces of music together. What do you see in your minds eye when you hear these pieces of music?
I would then write the word star on the board and elicit from the children all they know about stars, when they see them, their shape, colour. I would ask them what they would like to know about stars. We would discuss the sun.
I love the many clips available that explain the constellations and think the children would be fascinated with this. I would show some images of constellations and the names and ask the children would they like the names or would they call the something different based on what they see?
I would present the children stations for producing their own constellations in art work – 1 station would have black sugar paper, white chalk and star stickers. Another would have peg boards and pictures of constellations to copy. Another would have match sticks to create star shapes in various colours. Another could have playdough, straws and stick on glow in the dark stars.
To finish/at some stage in the week or day of the lesson we would read the story by Oliver Jeffers “How to Catch a Star” and discuss this.Niamh your station ideas for teaching stars is absolutely fabulous and will definitely use some of them in September planning. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. Love that story Frances I had a little look on the link. I love linking SESE with a story for the week. I think it truly establishes links for the children and helps to consolidate their learning.
The activity set that I would choose to do from this module would be on the theme of The Sun and Shadows and my lesson title would be titled: Shadows in the School Yard.
The concept that light travels in straight lines and the concept that shadows are areas of darkness would be covered in this activity that I would do on the yard.
I would introduce the concept of light and sources of light in the classroom. I think in previous lessons we would have discussed the difference between night and day, sunny days, wet days etc. For the main body of the lesson then we would go outside in groups of 3. One person having the chalk, one person to be lay on the yard ground and the other to ensure all operates ok.
Some questions that could be asked of the pupils while on the yard before the drawing commences would be: Do you always have a shadow? Why?Why not? What do you think your shadows will look like? Why?
After drawing the shadow of the pupils in their groups ask them to describe its shape and how does it look. Is it the exact shape of the person? Why?
Ask pupils to walk in their groups and see if they can guess anybody’s shadow based on the drawing on the yard. Discuss as a whole class back in the classroom how do you think shadows are formed? When might they be different?What a fantastic idea to use playdough to create the planets. I definitely think using the Planets as an Aistear theme almost or rather maybe constructing a Planets lesson and using the methodologies of Aistear to teach it would be particularly engaging for infant pupils and allow them to really discover and embrace all aspects of the planets. I also (despite my obsession with not mixing playdoughs usually!!!) love the idea of mixing the colours of the playdough to get the accurate colour for each planet and I think displaying these would make the pupils more proud of their work and also serve as a reference point for future learning.
An Inquiry based activity that I have done with senior Infants is this:
The effects different liquids have on an egg – transferring this knowledge then to the effects these liquids have on our teeth.
I place 4 eggs in 4 cups with milk, water, juice and coke.
I ask the pupils to make predictions as to what effect each liquid will have on the egg and record their responses.
After 24 hours we observe the cups of liquid and note any observations of changes to the liquid or the eggs.
Link/connect observations with predictions and then apply what this tells us about what is healthy for our teeth.I love this idea. I have toyed with the Teddy going home at weekends idea for many years and always came to the conclusion that I would be creating stress for families!! However I do think if Teddy basically became a member of the class and part of investigations this would be super for all the students. Teddy gives another voice/motive besides me talking and trying to drill them!! Love this idea- well done!
