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Hi John, that’s a really good idea having a rockets theme running through the school for space week. I think the children would love it especially if they had time to show some of the other classes how successful their rockets are. It would probably build excitement for the next year too when the kids see the more advanced experiments in advance.
The books mentioned in the presentation are lovely and I have regularly used Aliens love underpants. I also have used a fantastic book by astronaut Chris Hadfield called ‘The Darkest Dark’ which we use alongside learning about Space and the international space station in my school. The children love that they can watch him in action in space on the Canadian Space Agency Youtube page and then hear about what he was like as a child watching the first moon landing in the book. Another fantastic book is ‘Whatever Next’ by Jill Murphy to encourage children’s imaginations when learning about space travel.
The rocket mice experiment would be a fantastic experiment to use in junior infants after teaching children about rockets, watching videos of rockets launches and reading both ‘The Darkest Dark’ and ‘Whatever next’. It would be a lovely opportunity for children to experiment and hypothesis how speed and pressure exerted on the bottle will change how high their rocket mouse will travel.
Hi Sinead, I am really looking forward to using the Marvin and Milo collection too and I was thinking the same thing, its so lovely that the children are exposed to comics again. It is often rare to see a comic these days! The Paxi videos on the ESA kids website are also really good as they are a mixture of animation and real life. I found some other lovely videos from Chris Hadfield that are amazing when teaching children about life in space. They are fantastic as he shows how to brush your teeth in space, make a sandwich and sleep in space. In case you are interested for your 1st class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bCoGC532p8
I would really like to try the online resources covered in this module in my own school. The Stellarium app and website are such a great resources and I’m already hooked on using the stellarium app myself at night! I think it would be a really useful tool during winter. By changing the time on the app or webpage, you could give the children an idea of what they might be able to see in the evening before bed. I have used the ESA websites a lot with the children in my school and even have my own Paxi teddy that comes to visit each class when learning about space. The infants particularly love watching the Paxi videos. I have never used the Marvin and Milo activities and I would love to try some of their experiments with the children. The images are really lovely and would be lovely to try with parents who may come in to help during science week or space week.
I would really like to use the Space and Aliens activity set with the pupils in my school as it is something that as teachers, we often spend less time on because of the lack of evidence. The special life lesson where children draw something special, they would like to show an alien is a really unique idea and could be linked to other areas of the curriculum nicely. Informing children that they will have to act out the ‘special drawing’ would definitely help the children be more careful with their thought process and ideas especially in infants. The follow on activity of drawing an alien is a nice precursor to creating their own Alien using mala or clay. I think the activities overall are something the children would really enjoy and would allow them to become really creative in their design as well as using their own knowledge of plants and animals on Earth and how climate and certain conditions can effect an animals appearance or special features.
Hi Sarah, I’ve used this story with my infants too and they absolutely loved it. I did a very similar art lesson and also made some space ships from a paper plate and a paper bowl stuck together. We added paper windows and the children drew their idea of Aliens looking out. We hung them all in a line across the classroom alongside some underpants and a big Earth cut out at the end. They loved it.
Hi Ciara, this sounds like a really lovely lesson. The children would have such a fun time making the different planets using balloons. A few years ago, I did a similar lesson with 1st class about planets. We, as first class teachers, decided to link a lot of our literacy and art activities with our science lessons that month and as part of this the children designed their own planet, its composition, its inhabitants or lack there of and its orbit. I was amazed at how much they had picked up from the lessons and included in their designs and their writing. They had planets lying on their side like Uranus and planets spinning the opposite way like Venus. Space really is such a great way to inspire their love of science.
As a learning support teacher that works with infant classes, I would really like to use the ‘Up or down’ activity from the spherical Earth lessons from the Universe in a box activities when supporting the class teachers. As a school with children from all over the world, it would be a wonderful way to show how the Earth has no up or down. Using a globe the children could find their families home countries and mark them on the globe, similar to the polar bear and penguin idea from the lesson plan. This could be particularly nice to use during our schools multicultural week where we celebrate all nationalities. The ‘Earth Mosaic’ could be used and the children could draw features from their own families country. Through putting the mosaic together, the children could really see the idea of perspective and how up or down is relative to the observer.
Hi Aoife, this is such a lovely idea. I love working with shadows with the pupils in my school too. We recently had lots of fun in our Junior infant classes working with shadows when one of the children used a dinosaur toy to create a shadow and we realised we could make a somewhat life sized dinosaur in the classroom using distance from the light source. We have also played guess the object based on the shadow and on very sunny days we give children chalk to trace each other’s shadows in the yard. It is such a lovely activity and the children really understand how what they learn in the classroom can be transferred to real life as they realise that shadows come and go based on the light source (which can be frustrating if a cloud passes in front of the sun while in the middle of tracing a classmates shadow).
One inquiry-based activity that I would like to use and have used in my classroom is growing beans while reading Jack and the Beanstalk. This is similar to the growing tomatoes experiment from the curious minds teacher guidelines however we often hypothesise and experiment with what might happen to the beans under a variety of different conditions such as no water, no light or no oxygen and of course the children’s own beans have access all three. The children love watching the progress and keeping an eye on their experiments.
In previous years this experiment has also led to a further inquiry led experiment as the bean without light grew to huge heights but was white due to a lack of chlorophyl. The children (and staff) all guessed or hypothesised if the plant would turn green if allowed in the sunlight and how long it would take. There was great excitement monitoring the plant each day when it was placed in the sunlight with surprising results.
My name is Lorna and I am a teacher in an infant school. I am currently in learning support and focus on maths recovery and maths team teaching. As a qualified geologist, support teachers with space week and science week in my school. My favourite space fact is ‘there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth’.
