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Hello Chantelle,
Starting indoors with the beads in their neutral state before revealing the change outdoors is a lovely bit of lesson design, that build-up really sets the prediction and reveal up as a genuine moment of discovery rather than something explained upfront.
Great to tie it in with sun safety. This is an opportunity to explain the beads change colour because of UV light specifically, not heat or visible brightness. This is a good thing to explain to children since it helps explain why sunscreen is still needed on cool or cloudy days (of which we normally have many).Hello Caoimhe,
Love the idea of using the planet dance as a year long warm up. You could take it further by scaling the distances loosely to reflect reality, the inner planets are all fairly close together, but there’s then a much bigger gap out to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, so some hoops might only need a small hop apart while others need a proper sprint!
Hi Emily,
Its a great activity to compare drawings of the moon between the children. You can also ask them what shapes they see on the surface of the moon and how they think those shapes got there: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/craters/en/Hello Sharon,
nice progression from outdoor discovery straight into indoor experimentation with the lamps. Its also good to show them how angling the torch close to the ground creates a long shadow.Hello Ellen,
A whole thematic week on planets would tie in really nicely with Space Week. For older students, you could adapt the colouring activity to investigate why the planets are the colour they are, https://science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/the-colorful-lives-of-the-outer-planets/Hello Sinead,
lovely way to zoom out from the familiar (locality, country) to the universe before zooming back in on the planets.
Planets don’t all take the same amount of time to go around the Sun, Mercury zips round in just 88 days, while Neptune takes about 165 years, so if groups are given different planets to orbit at different speeds that’s a nice physical way to show how orbit time differ.Hello Edel,
nice balance of independence and structure here, letting groups research their own planet while keeping them on pre-selected websites is a sensible way to build digital literacy safely alongside the science.
Temperature and weight have come up a few times in other lessons, so another interesting fact worth adding to the mix is that Neptune has the strongest winds in the Solar System, reaching over 2,000 km/h. Could be a fun one to pose to the class, how does that compare to the fastest thing they can think of?Hi Glenys,
The shadow hunt around trees, buildings and playground equipment is such a great way to get pupils noticing shadows are everywhere, not just attached to people.
On making shadows longer or shorter with their bodies, a fun challenge to add is asking pairs to try to make their shadows exactly the same length despite being different heights, they’ll quickly discover that crouching, stretching or angling themselves relative to the Sun changes things just as much as actual height does, which nicely reinforces that shadow length depends on more than just how tall someone is.Hello Gail,
the movement-based approach in the PE hall sounds perfect for keeping kids engaged, and I like that you picked up on the song’s descriptions too, that’s often the bit that gets skipped in favour of just names and order.Hello Margaret, Great breadth of integration here, moving through art, maths and PE with the same core content really helps the planet names and facts stick from multiple angles for infants. I love the idea of creating their own planets, you could ask them what a planet between two existing planets might look like and why.
Hi Alison,
Love the addition of using AAC devices alongside the hoops and directional instructions means every pupil has a way to participate, and the marble art extension is a lovely tactile way to represent each planet’s texture and colour.Hi Lora,
Really solid application of the shadow learning here, the sundial project is such a satisfying way to bring together everything the children have observed about shadow length and direction, and pairing it with theMe and My Shadow story for younger classes is a great way to introduce the same ideas through narrative.
Can the sundial be used all year long is a nice way to do a longer term project on this. Rhe Sun’s path across the sky shifts with the seasons because of the Earth’s tilt, so a sundial calibrated in summer will read slightly differently in winter, that’s a great one to let older children investigate for themselves if you revisit the sundial across the school year.Hello Ciara,
The ball-torch-Earth model is such a clear way to let children physically discover that the Moon isn’t changing shape, its a very hard concept to understand without physical demonstration.Hollo Olwyn,
Lovely activities to introduce the planets and begin to understand them.
One planet fact worth having ready for the ordering game, Saturn’s not the only ringed planet, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have rings too, just much fainter and harder to see!Hello Colin,
Splitting the class into groups to research their own planet is a great way to let them dig into what interests them most. A couple of good questions to ask when they come back together are which planet is hottest, and which is heaviest? It might surprise them that Venus is actually hotter than Mercury, despite being further from the Sun, thanks to its thick atmosphere, and that some of the biggest planets are actually made of much lighter material than the small rocky ones. A great way to challenge their assumptions!