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Our school has a huge passion for STEM and space week is always celebrated as a whole school. In my particular classroom i try and keep space week as a theme and make it as cross curricular as possible. I would give an area in the classroom to display all of our space week vocabulary, story books, art work etc. I have a science section all year round and it makes it really easy to refer back to informally throughout the day, for example when children are lining up, we would do a spaceship launch countdown as my timer for children to get into their spots.
To begin the week, I would use song to recap the names of the planets. When children are then familiar with the planet names and features, I would also read the aliens wear underpants book and I would facilitate a whole class art project. Children will be put into groups and will work together to make some paper mâché planets. This will be worked on over the week. When it is finished it will be painted and put on display so older classes can come down and look at it and my class can showcase all their knowledge.
I would host a bingo session and an orienteering quiz for Junior and Senior Infants. We would have lots of movement breaks that are related to space and the planets.I love how you have included space in almost every subject and so effectively. I love the postcard and the introduction of descriptive writing.
The activity I have chosen is ‘Activity set weather’ for hands- on activities in the classroom with junior infants.
To being we would look at the 4 seasons (Winter, summer, autumn and spring) and what types of weather occurs in each season. The children can refer to the seasons chart that is displayed in our class. Then i would ask some of the children to tell the forecast for the day and discuss what they have worn into school.
I will then use a variety of objects and clothes. Tell the children that we are going on a winter holiday. We need to sort the clothes and objects that we will need for his holiday.
Children must sort them correctly into the correct suitcases for each holiday.
Other games I have done is weather boy/girl and map of Ireland with pictures of different weather- Role play. Matching games – match clothes to the correct weather on worksheets. To consolidate learning. Arts and crafts- We make rainbows. We can also make waterproof clothes by looking at varied materials and what is waterproof/ not waterproof.I love the video link for these experiments and they are all easy to do with materials you would have in the classroom. I am looking forward to using all these tools and experiments in the classroom next year.
Many people in this forum have mentioned this stimulus but i just love the book ‘Aliens Wear Underpants’. I find this to be a really gripping stimulus for discussing space and aliens.
We would then do a KWL chart and we would discuss what we already know about space and aliens.
Once we have discussed all we know I would ask each child what they think an alien looks like? We would draw or paint aliens, we would make our aliens using 3-d materials – clay, construction, playdough.
Then we would discuss and classify our aliens. We would then talk about the aliens home in space. We would create a small world area with constellations (stars) and the moon using concrete objects. Then we would play with our aliens in the space areas. I would make these lessons as interactive as possible. I think using the tuff tray for this would be best.
We would also create rockets and spaceships these could then be used in the small world area so we could really incorporate it with AISTEAR
I love these experiments and you have laid them out so well, i love the way you have included recommendations for the experiments also. There are some really good recommendations in this thread and i will certainly be trying these with my class in september.
I would choose the Planets to focus on as the starting point for learning about space with infant classes. I think having a stimulus such as ‘The little boy who dared to dream’ would be a great introduction.
I would then do a whole class art and get each table to work on a different planet so we could display them in our classroom. Each tablet would be given an outline to look at. I would also integrate the song : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2prtmPEjOc. By working on a different planet each day or two, we could build an entire solar system slowly discover each one..
As the class get comfortable recalling information about the planets, I would introduce some games where pupils play What planet am I ? eg: I am very hot— children will guess which planet this is.
When the children are confident enough i would introduce a buddy system where children from older classes would come down to listen to what the infants have learned about the planets and to showcase their art.
I love the way you have laid it out in stations. My favourite is the moon walking station. I would never have thought of this and will definitely be borrowing these ideas for my class in septmeber.
Hi Ciara i love this idea for exploring water, im sure the children loved using all the different materials whilst also having a friendly competition with peers, i will definitely be trying this in future.
Hi everyone, My name is Kayleigh and I am teaching Senior Infants in September. I love the fact Saturn’s rings are 90% water.
I would love to use the inquiry based activity like we saw in this module with the missing sweets in the jar and fingerprinting! I thought this lesson was excellent and so engaging for all class levels. I think it is so sweet to see a group of students with little magnifying glasses working on their fingerprint. I had completely forgot about this lesson until i was reminded in this module. I’m definitely learning that science doesn’t need to be so difficult and overwhelming. Breaking it into mini-lessons has definitely helped me to fit more science in over the years! One lesson I might do with my class in September would be missing prizes from our prize box. We would make a mind map of what we already know. I would then show a picture of a fingerprint and we would explore fingerprinting, the science behind it and do similar activities to what we seen in the slides here. We would expand it to talk about the fingerprints of twins in our class and look at all the patterns and details of our prints.
