[Mary Donohoe]

This sounds like great fun Margaret – the children would definitely enjoy launching the paper/mice. This activity would suit my own plan – Humpty Dumpty or his spoon could be launched in a similar way.

[Mary Donohoe]

Space Week in my Junior Infant class

Stimulus:

Humpty Dumpty went to the moon

On a supersonic spoon

He brought some porridge and a tent

But when he landed the spoon got bent

Humpty said he didn’t care

For all I know he’s still up there! (Michael Rosen)

 

Lesson 1: Day & Night (Astronomical Society of the Pacific • astrosociety.org/MySkyTonight)/Day & night images

Use pictures to discuss activities that we do during the day or at night. When would we see the moon? What does the moon look like? Does it look the same every night?

Journey to the moon (ESERO) (Adapted to suit Junior Infants)

·         Pictures of phases of the moon

·         Encourage the children to look at the moon each night – what have they noticed during the week? Does the moon look the same each night?

 

Lesson 2: Meet our neighbours: the Moon (AstroEDU)

Can we see Humpty Dumpty when we look at the moon? What can we see?

Fabric & fibre art activity to create the moon

 

Lesson 3: How will Humpty Dumpty survive on the moon?

Junk construction: He likes to sit on walls so we could build a wall on the moon out of moon rocks for him to sit on;

·         Designing & Making: We can design and build a moon buggy for him to get around (using Mobilo) or Make an atmosphere glider (taken from Stargazing activity book)

 

 

Lesson 4:

Humpty Dumpty might be lonely or who would he meet on the moon? What would they look like?

Draw a picture of Humpty Dumpty’s new friend. Use clay, pipe cleaners, cocktail sticks, mixed materials to make the alien.

 

Lesson 5:

Humpty Dumpty got to the moon on a spoon. How might that have happened? How will we get Humpty Dumpty home?

·         Explore launching a spoon by throwing or using a catapult being aware of fair tests and safety

·         Design and build a rocket ship to get Humpty Dumpty home – Junk/Construction

·         Launch (throw) the rockets and see what rocket goes the furthest

·         Teacher demonstration of Vitamin rocket (from Stargazing)

[Mary Donohoe]

Talking about animals is a popular topic in Infants so I have opted to consider the ESERO lesson plan looking at Animals in the cold. The lesson suggests using a story set in a cold country as a stimulus and so I would use Julia Donaldson’s “Jonty Gentoo – The Adventures of a Penguin”. Not only does it introduce us to penguins, (and polar bears), it also introduces us to the North and South Poles and hot and cold seas. After reading the story we could name how many different types of weather Jonty experienced on his travels. As we identify each type of weather we would identify how we would cope in such conditions before concentrating on the extreme cold weather that penguins and polar bears experience at the Poles. We would then discuss how we would keep warm if we were going to the North or South Pole and then link this, as suggested in the lesson plan, to how the penguin or polar bears keep warm. We learn that penguins and polar bears have three ways of keeping warm and we can explore how each of these work.

1: Thick fur or feathers – like a heavy jumper or a coat, hat, scarf and gloves. The children can put on heavy clothes or select suitable clothes from the dress-up box to demonstrate this

2: The penguin’s feathers and the polar bear’s fur are covered in a layer of grease which works to keep cold water out. The children will coat one hand with Vaseline and compare what happens to the greased hand when water is dripped onto it as opposed to dripping water directly on to their bare hand

3: Penguins and polar bears also have a thick layer of fat under their skin. This layer of fat helps them to stay warm in very cold places. We can explore this by making a fat glove. You will need three zip lock bags (1 bigger than the other two). Half fill the smaller bags with cooking oil. Making sure they are properly sealed, put the two bags of oil into the bigger bag to make a fat glove. Next you will need two bowls of very cold water – you might even add ice cubes to the bowls to really get the idea of the icy cold in the North and South Pole. The children can take turns to wear the fat glove on one hand and keep their other hand bare and put their hands into the bowls and see what happens – does the fat glove work?

I would envisage that activity 1 would be an independent station while activities 2 and 3 would need teacher support. The activities could be rotated over a class or over a week and combined with two other independent stations linked to Weather – for example dressing a paper doll for a trip to the North Pole or sorting pictures of a variety of clothes and accessories into the correct weather group or a geography activity – draw a map showing Jonty’s journey (remembering the children are in Infants!)

This is a link to Jonty Gentoo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWtTalB-zPUusing the from hot and cold countries are a popular

[Mary Donohoe]

Margaret, I love your idea of the nesting boxes or circles to help represent to young children their place in the world. My experience has been that a lot of young children know names of places – America, Cork, Ireland, Dublin, Spain – but they have no idea how each of these places relate to each other. The nesting boxes or hoops would be a wonderful 3D representation, much better than the flat visual of places on a map.

[Mary Donohoe]

I found many interesting activities in the Stargazing Live activity pack. Some were probably a bit difficult for children in Infants but they could be adapted easily enough – I know the children would love rolling out the toilet roll to do the Loo Roll solar system activity and as I will have fourteen children in my Junior Infant class it would be a very doable whole class activity in the Hall, on the corridor or in the yard.

However my main focus of work would involve the activities included in the ESERO Mars resource pack. I could use “Baby Brains” as a starting point – Baby Brains’ rocket landed and when he stepped out this is what he saw – and pictures of Mars that are included in the pack. Is he home? Where is he? This would lead us into a discussion that would involve us comparing and contrasting this planet (Mars) and where he should be (Earth). We will spend time looking at the features of Earth and the features of Mars. We will consider how Baby Brains’ life would be if he stayed on Mars and would it be the same as on Earth – weather, food, pets, friends.

This introduction and discussion will lead us into a group of activities that will rotate over a week:

·         Construct the Martian landscape using a paper plate, junk materials and paint

·         Make a Martian – using clay, paint, junk materials, fabric & fibre

·         Make an atmosphere glider (taken from Stargazing activity book)

·         Use Mobilo to invent a buggy to drive around Mars

·         Make a rocket to get Baby Brains home (Construction/Junk modelling)

Our gliders, buggies and rockets will be tested and demonstrated to the group members and rest of the class as part of the sessions. However, at the end of the week we will discuss how successful our rockets were and what we might change. The block of work will be concluded with a teacher demonstration of the rocket from Stargazing – although I might have to have a practice launch or two at home first!!

[Mary Donohoe]

Niamh I also like the Space & Aliens set but I think your idea to link it to a planet is a very clever extension. I agree with you that by comparing and contrasting two environments it will help the children to imagine an alien that they can compare and contrast with a human.

[Mary Donohoe]

Eveleen, I really like the idea of linking the painting lesson to Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” painting.

[Mary Donohoe]

Love the idea of the alien passport!!

[Mary Donohoe]

I have to be honest that I found it very difficult to select one activity from those outlined in the Module. I really enjoyed this Module and can see myself using all of the activities outlined in some way or another. I think that the Universe in a Box will be a very useful resource to have.

I already bring the infants outside to explore the sun and shadows but the content included in the activity set has made me realise that I could develop this much further. We need to go out over the course of a day and observe what happens to the shadows as the day progresses. This would be easily done but would add a lot to the children’s understanding of the sun and shadows.

The children engage with the story “Baby Brains” as a comprehension/making connections exercise. However, I have come to realise that I have been failing to use the book to its full potential. Baby Brains becomes an astronaut and goes into space. This point could be the stimulus and starting point for any one of these activities. While Baby Brains is in space what does he see? If he sees the earth what will it look like and we can travel down the spherical earth road. If he sees the moon we might engage with what the moon looks like when he sees it from his rocket and what it looks like when we see it from our gardens. However, asking the children what else Baby Brains sees while in space to ascertain if they mention stars or planets and if they can name a planet is probably the best extension activity for me to engage in. I have taught Infants for a number of years and have never done a lesson on the planets so I think this is the road I will travel. They will enjoy the Planets – Journey through the Solar System PE activities. I prefer the “We are the Planets” song and would use it as a way of briefly describing what each planet is like and where it is in the solar system. We would then create a whole-class fabric & fibre frieze of the solar system with the sun in the centre and Baby Brains in his rocket flying through space. While the children are working I would play Holst’s Planets Suite in the background!!

I feel this isn’t exactly the focused answer you were looking for but I just couldn’t pick one!

[Mary Donohoe]

Yes Siobhan, I loved the idea of the earth mosaic too and agree with you that the children will love putting them together at the end. Personally I was thinking of perhaps creating the planets as a fabric and fiber activity. I will have fourteen children in my room and thought that we might each do our own earth but then work in twos to create each of the other planets in the solar system.

[Mary Donohoe]

Aoife I love this idea about designing a ladder to help Rapunzel to escape the tower. I find that children enjoy building using different materials and I’ve often asked them to design and build houses for the three little pigs. Your idea will give me a new focus – I especially like that the children are given an opportunity to plan and design their ladders before building them and finally putting them to the test. Thanks!

[Mary Donohoe]

This year our school read After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty got back up again) by Dan Santat as a One School One Book initiative. While we all enjoyed reading and chatting about the events of the story the highlight was undoubtedly when every child in the school made a paper plane and went on to the school yard to fly them. This activity will be my prompt as we will discuss how successfully our planes flew. Did we notice anything that helped or impeded the flight of the plane? Did it matter what direction we threw it in? Did the design of the paper plane influence the success of the flight? Which designs were best? We would then have a series of tests to investigate our predictions and opinions – throwing our planes against the wind and then throwing them with the wind; finding the plane that flew furthest. We would need to decide on what is a fair test before we do any of these activities. We could take pictures of these activities and use a pictogram to represent the results.

The taking the next step activity will be looking at other machines that fly and I would then use the Curious Minds Falling Things: Paper Helicopters classroom resource to do this. In addition to engaging in some of the activities such as exploring how things fall and deciding what constitutes the most successful helicopter – the number of spins or how long it takes to fall. Our final test will be to see was the better flying machine – the best paper plane or the best paper helicopter. What advice would we give to Humpty Dumpty as a result of our experiments?

[Mary Donohoe]

Hi! My name is Mary and I am teaching Junior Infants outside Navan in Co. Meath. I  have 10 boys and 4 girls in my class next year and thought that space might be a topic that would suit – as someone said earlier, children love astronauts and the idea of going into space. I am ashamed to admit that I have no interesting space fact to share however when I lived in Australia I always loved the fact that I could see the Southern Cross. It was as if it was reminding me that I was somewhere different on the planet.

[Mary Donohoe]

I also live and teach not far from Navan Serena and I am ashamed that I only recently learned that all those references to Beaufort in place names in the town were to do with the man who developed the Beaufort Scale! It is an indictment of what little attention was placed on the local area and local people when I was in Primary School! Courses like this one ensure that things are definitely improving!

[Mary Donohoe]

Our school is within easy walking distance of a disused bog. A local community group has taken it over with the aim of developing it as a local amenity. A walk has been developed around the bog and a picnic area has been added. It was a huge asset to what is a rural community during the Covid lockdowns and the picnic area was used for socially distanced birthday parties. This area will become the focus for an integrated plan which will involve all subjects but especially the Arts. As part of this project we will do the following activities:
History:
• Explore how bogs were formed;
• Explore the properties of bogs and their importance in the preservation of evidence from the ancient past looking at some of the discoveries that are on display in the Natural History Museum and the National Museum. Many of these can be viewed online but a trip to visit these could also be planned (when National History Museum reopens!);
• Look at how people used the bogs in the past;
Science:
• A field trip to the bog would involve going on a senses walk along the walkway to explore what we can see, hear, feel and smell there that we cannot experience in the grounds of the school;
• Photographs could be taken with iPads to facilitate looking for and identifying the unique flora and fauna found in the bog. We could explore why these species live in the bog and not in the school field;
• Discuss how important bogs are for the environment and protecting us from climate change;
Geography:
• Draw a map to show the journey from the school to the bog;
Visual Arts:
• Using a variety of drawing materials we can make observational drawings of a plant that we found in the bog;
• An extension of this activity would be to focus on a small section of the drawing and magnify it on to a bigger page. This could be presented as a drawing or a painting;
• Using the natural materials found in the bog create a picture and take a photograph of this before breaking it up again;
Creative Writing:
• Write an acrostic poem “Bog man”.
• Write an imaginary diary entry written by the bog man.
• Write a newspaper article reporting on the finding of bog body in our bog;
Drama:
• Create a series of frieze frames representing the archaeologists digging in the bog; the archaeologists finding “something”; the archaeologists realising what they have found;
• Hot seating – interview the archaeologists who found a bog body;
Music:
• Learn the song “The Rattlin’ Bog”;
SPHE:
• Discuss the importance of looking after the bog area when we visit the picnic area and go walking there

[Author]

Posts