[Mary Nicholson]

This sounds like a lovely lesson Linda

[Mary Nicholson]

I have chosen to focus on the Mouse Rockets activity to try with my class this year. Hearing that Rocket revolution is this year’s theme for Space Week adds to the appeal. I will follow the Curious Minds Framework and the different steps necessary to cover all bases for an inquiry based approach.
Engaging the children will be easy as the children love everything to do with space week and rockets. I would use a combination of drama and movement to introduce the children to the rocket launch. We can count down and launch into space in our imaginations. I would follow this up with a video clip of a real rocket launch and discuss how the rocket gets its energy to fly to space, the power, energy and forces needed to propel the rockets.
I would then guide the children through the process to create our ‘mouse rockets’ as shown in this module. The children will be encouraged to predict and experiment with different size bottles and encouraged to record their results.
Children could design different rockets to put on the launchers and note how design effects their trajectory.
This lesson can form the basis of numerous cross curricular lessons, English, creative writing, poetry, art, geography, history, maths. There is a huge scope to build this topic through many subject areas during space week.

[Mary Nicholson]

Thanks Laura for sharing the names of the books. I will look at them on you tube. It’s lovely to get new ideas from the forums

[Mary Nicholson]

I am selecting the activity Where Do You Live? Esero 5
To engage the children with the lesson I would read the fairy tale “The Three Little Pigs” to the children and use it as a launch pad to talk about our own homes, materials used in our homes and the features of our homes that make them safe, warm and comfortable.
I will ask the children to describe what their own house looks like and encourage them to name some of its features, such as the colour, what sort of roof it has, whether it’s a detached house or a semi-detached house, whether it has a garden or not.
Using the ESERO worksheet I will encourage the children to draw a circle round the house that looks most like the house they live in and ask them to colour in their house. Children explore what their own house looks like and I will tell them that we are going to make a model of our homes from playdough.
We are fortunate to have our school based in the village so it will be easy and safe to go on a walk through the village, identify the features, where our homes are situated and the facilities in the village.
Returning to our classroom we can group together all the model houses made by the children and encourage them to look closely at the village to identify what is missing from our model. We can work in teams to add the missing features, the handball alley, the school, the church etc.
Painting the roads and the river and building a simple background will help the children create a simple map in which to accurately place their homes. We can discuss why homes were built by rivers in the past and explore the use of the land and river as a source of food as our school is in a predominately agricultural, rural area.
I think my junior classes would really enjoy these lessons and the walk in their community. These are practical, fun activity-based lessons that encourage observation, identification, discussion, individual and teamwork.
This model can form the basis of many additional lessons. Creative writing, poetry, art, geography and gaeilge, can use our model as a launch pad.
We can revisit the village on a Maths week walk and note road names, signs, distances, speed limits, post collection times and integrate a Maths and number element into our design too. Counting, colours, measurement. The model will provide endless opportunities for learning and investigating.

[Mary Nicholson]

I love your action plan for space week Kevin. The space passport and the visiting each room and learning about the planets is an excellent idea

[Mary Nicholson]

I would like to explore the activity set Space and Aliens with my class this year as I know the children will thoroughly enjoy it. I will use the book The little alien, Kiddies Creative Corner to open the lesson and to introduce the idea of a little alien to the children. As this alien travels around earth looking for friends, he meets our class and invites us to travel to space with him. I will bring the children to the school yard or gp room and guide the children through our imaginary journey. We will begin closely gathered in our spaceship counting down and as we launch into space, they may run quickly to show the power and speed needed to launch into space. We can regroup and continue to journey in our imaginations through space. They can look out the windows, and I will introduce new sights for them to see on each side. Using movement, we will travel around the yard seeing different planets and stars and choose a planet to land on. We will recreate landing, opening the spaceship, moving through space and searching for alien friends exploring a new environment. I will give the children freedom to explore on their own just as the little alien did before regrouping everyone in our spaceship for our return flight to earth and to our classroom. I will encourage the children to tell their stories and describe their new alien friends. Using plasticine or clay we will sculpt replicas of our new alien friends. The lesson can be extended to acrostic poems on aliens, creative writing recounts of their journey in space, postcards and letters to their new alien friends and painting and art lessons on the theme. We can sort our aliens based on traits they share in common, their height, their size, their weight and explore maths vocabulary with them. They can also be used to explore friendships and differences and similarities. There is huge scope to extend the work across many curricular areas.

[Mary Nicholson]

I think the children would really enjoy this lesson Julienne. Art, craft and aliens would be very enjoyable in the infant classroom

[Mary Nicholson]

I would like to explore the activity set “The sun and shadows” with my class this year. I thoroughly enjoyed the book The bear and his shadow and would use this as a stimulus with the children. I would use discussion and questions to help the children understand the concept and language needed. I would follow this up in the hands-on activity by using bears and flashlights to explore shadows in the classroom. This would give the children a chance to experiment with the effect the direction of the light and the distance has on changing the shadows. I know the children would thoroughly enjoy this activity. I would build on the lesson by bringing the children into the school yard and let them enjoy tracing around shadows in the sunlight.
Chalk shadow tracing in the yard would be a fun, hands-on outdoor activity where children use the sun and toys or their own bodies to create shapes, trace the outlines on the pavement with chalk, and watch how the shadows change.
How to Do the Activity
• Step outside: Go to a sunny area in the school yard.
• Make shapes: Encourage the child to stand in different funny poses or place toys or leaves on the ground so the sun makes a dark shape.
• Trace the outline: Use the large ground chalk to draw right around the edge of the shadow.
• Check back later: Come back an hour or two later to see how the shadow moved away from the chalk line as the sun shifted in the sky
We can record the work using a digital camera adding another enjoyable element to the lesson and display our work in the classroom. A follow up art lesson tracing the face profile using light and shadow would be a lovely visual conclusion to this lesson

[Mary Nicholson]

I’ve just enjoyed that book “A hundred, billion, trillion stars” by Seth Fishman on You Tube. A lovely recommendation. A lot of very interesting facts and information. I will enjoy it with the children in my class. Thanks Ciara

[Mary Nicholson]

Ciara, I had no idea sunsets in Mars were blue. I’m going googling that now. That’s a lovely fact and definitely one i will be sharing with my class in September

[Mary Nicholson]

Hi, my name is Mary. I teach infants to second class in a small country school. I enjoy doing space week projects and songs each year and look forward to learning lots of space facts and getting new ideas in this course

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