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Activity- Dancing Raisins
This is a great experiment that children can engage with themselves meaning it is child-centred and they are leading the learning. I would arrange the children in pairs (I chose pairs as too many people in a group for an experiment like this can mean not everyone gets a job and gets to fully take part). Each group will get 2 jars, one with water and one with 7-up and a handful of raisins. They will drop some raisins into the jar of water, observe what happens and record it. They will then drop some raisins into the jar with 7-up, observe and records. They will notice the difference between what happens in the jar with water and the jar with 7-up. Afterwards there will be a discussion as to why the raisins move up and down in the 7-up and why they sink to the bottom and stay there in the water. Children might suggest the raisins were heavier in the water so the experiment could be repeated but having weighted each set of raisins first. This will show that even having the same weight of raisins still causes the ones in the 7-up to move up and down. This is a great experiment for the children to carry out themselves and provides lots of opportunity for discussion and investigation.
rum 4- How would you use this activity in your classroomReally simple and effective way to bring Space into Aster and learn through play. Something I will be trying to do more next year.
Activity: Weather- What Clothes to Wear?
This is an excellent activity for exploring weather and the different clothes you wear for different weather. It begins to introduce materials and their properties also. The children will all receive a picture of various seasons and they will colour it. I will ask them different questions about their pictures e.g. is it hot/cold? What is the boy wearing? Is it wet?. I will remind them of the 4 seasons and we will try to match each picture they coloured to a season. These will be displayed on the wall underneath each season. The children will sit in a circle and there will be a dress-up box in the middle with various items of clothing in it. I will tell a number of short stories describing the weather and ask different groups of children to put on appropriate clothes to match the weather I have described. I will ask them to explain their choices and I will ask the other children if they agree. There will be a lot of who/what/when type of questions. By the end of the activity the children will be aware that the sun makes you hot so you need less clothes on sunny days and in the winter when it is colder you need more clothes to keep warm. I will then use the story included in the activity plan to incorporate lots of different types of weather. While reading the story the children will act out different parts and use their bodies and voices.
Activity: Special Life (ESERO 19)
I was really interested in this activity when I came across it. I think it would be ideal for use in the infant classes and I believe it is adaptable to suit different needs that may arise in classes. I would explain to the children that we live on Earth, which is a planet in the solar system. I would show them a a globe and a picture of our solar system with all of the other planets. I would explain to them that people only live on earth and there is no evidence of human life on any other planet. I would tell them that we are going to pretend that people do live on these planets and they are coming to visit Earth. I would tell them that they want to see all of the special things on Earth. We would have a discussion about some special things on Earth and then the children would be able to choose how they want to represent their special object. They will be able to draw it/write about it/ make it out of playdough/ or use the iPads to get a picture of it online. Then everyone will gather in a circle and act out their special object while the other children guess what it is. When guessed they will reveal their representation of their special object. After this we will discuss aliens and what they are. Then they will choose the means of representation they prefer to construct an alien and we will display them to the class. I would ensure the children understand that no one has found aliens yet so we do not know if they really exist or what they look like. This means that everyone’s alien design is valid and unique.
I really like the idea of stations to explore the moon. It is a great entry point for teaching about Space and is something I would love to experiment with.
Activity: The Spherical Earth
This activity is very effective in the explanation of the earth being a sphere as it is a tricky concept to teach and to come to understand, especially for young learners. I would use this as an entry point to the teaching of Space as I believe it is an important concept for children to explore and begin to understand. It is clear, from working with young children that they do see the Earth as having an ‘up’ and a ‘down’ and they wonder how people and buildings stay upright if they are ‘upside down’ on the globe. I would use the activity with the polar bear on the North Pole and the penguin on the South Pole. I would show the globe to the children and do a roleplay between the polar bear and penguin displaying how either one thinks the other is upside down, but in reality it’s how they perceive one another. While I appreciate this is a tricky concept to grasp at a young age I would definitely use the earth mosaic template for the children to draw a landscape above the dotted line and below it the seabed or rocks. When the mosaics are arranged in a circle the children can stand in various positions and notice that there is no real ‘up’ and ‘down’ when they search for it because depending on where they are looking from the pictures are positioned differently. This is a really interesting way to explore the spherical earth that I am excited to put into practice soon.
Hi Emma, this is an excellent idea for a lesson on forces and is something I would love to try with infants next year.
I’m Jill. Next year I will be teaching Senior Infants. My favourite space fact: the sun is very big, one million earths could fit inside the sun.
Inquiry-Based Activity: My activity is based on light and exploring light with different materials. Before beginning the lesson I would tell the children a story about a little boy who is always woken up very early in the morning because he has no blinds in his room. He really wants to get some blinds but he does not know what material they should be made of. The children will have a range of materials to test and a flashlight. Before recording results they will predict if they think the light will shine through or not. Materials used will include, paper, newspaper, tissue, cardboard, and tinfoil. Using their results the children will decide on which material would be most effective to use as blinds to stop the light from coming through.
