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Hi Caroline,
The KWL chart is a fab way to start the class and encourage children to talk about their ideas of what space is. Nice touch using A Place for Pluto to bring in the dwarf planet distinction too!
Hi Denise,
The oreos are an excellent and tasty way to teach the moon phases. If you are ever looking for more visual guides check out:
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/moon-phases/en/Hi Caitriona,
Nice mix of indoor and outdoor exploration, and adding shadow puppet videos as an extra is a nice way to link the science to something creative and fun the children can take further at home.
Thanks for sharing the video of how to use a cup, light and paper to show different moon phases, its very effective!Hi Aislinn,
Lovely mix of indoor and outdoor exploration here, and adding shadow puppet videos as an extra is a nice way to introduce the topicHi Eileen,
such a nice way to bring art and science together for Junior Infants, and asking where they’ve placed the Sun or Moon relative to the shadow at the end is a lovely bit of built-in reasoning, gets them connecting position of light to position of shadow without it feeling like a test. Additionally you can talk about the difference between the shadows caused by the moon (fainter) and sun (stronger) and and how that’s because moonlight is really just sunlight reflected off the Moon, so it’s much weaker to begin with.Hello Lucy,
Good progression here, going from free exploration into shadow tracing and then building up to an actual working sundial, that’s a lovely way to let the children discover the connection between shadow position and time for themselves rather than being told it.
Hello Elaine,
Great choice of books to open with, and I love that you’ve built in the “does the shadow stay the same or change” question for two children standing together, that’s a great seed for children starting to notice how shadows can overlap or merge depending on position. Good for spatial skills development.Hello Jade,
I love that they are “shadow detectives”. and using the Bear in the Big Blue House song for EAL support is a great way to help children with a language barrier.
I like your shadow activities, one way you could extend it out is challenging to them on how to make different shapes as they will have to predict how to hold themselves before checking their shadows to see if it worked.Hi Aiofe,
I like how each step is clearly modelled, and the visual prompts alongside the craft activity work very well. Using paper plates to create the larger planets is a particularly effective and accessible approach
On comparing planets by size, one fact that often surprises children during model making is just how much of a jump in size there is between the rocky planets and the gas giants, all four rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) could fit inside Jupiter with room to spare, so it might be worth encouraging groups to really exaggerate that size difference in their modelsHi Michelle,
The “if you could visit any planet” question is such a great way to get imaginations going before the science even starts, and I love that you’ve built in the older/younger paired teaching, explaining a concept to someone else is a great way to see how well you understand something.
For the solar system in a box, you could include the sizes of planets too, if Earth is the size of a marble, Jupiter would need to be about the size of a basketball, and the Sun would be roughly as tall as a house. You could ask them to represent these jumps in size however they can.Hi Áine,
Love the hoops game, getting them physically moving between “planets” while remembering the Sun is too hot to land in is such a clever way to remember both the names and a bit of size/heat awareness at the same time.
On the favourite planet question at the end, a fun fact worth having ready is that Saturn is so light for its size it would actually float in water, if you could find a bath big enough (https://science.nasa.gov/saturn/facts/), since it’s made mostly of hydrogen/helium gas rather than rock!Hi Emma,
Such a well-structured lesson, love that you’ve built in the return visit to the same spot later in the day, that’s a lovely way to get the children noticing change over time without it feeling like a separate lesson.
On the biggest/smallest shadows, it’s not just distance that matters, angle does too, a torch held overhead gives a short, squashed shadow, while a low angle stretches it right out, the same reason our own shadows are long morning and evening but short at midday.Hi Alison,
Love the guided questioning during the bear investigation building up to to the “light can’t pass through, so it blocks and creates a shadow” idea. I think the collaborative mind map and sharing is excellent to begin discussions.Hello Nicola,
Sounds like an excellent progression for the lesson moving from torches and globes indoors to the real outdoor tracing, and lovely that the weather cooperated on the day!
The teddy-and-globe day/night model is a great one to have up your sleeve for next year, and if you do try it, a nice extra layer is that the teddies would also experience different lengths of day depending on where they’re velcroed, since the Earth’s tilt means the poles get extreme long days or nights depending on the season.
