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Hi Kate,
I love all these ideas, in particular the different literacy activities you have included like make a passport for an alien, I know my senior infant class would absolutely love that! This can given me great ideas, which I will definitely use going forward. Thanks for this!
Lauren
Activity Set: Rockets
I really like the rocket mice experiment, and think this would be the most suitable experiment from this module to use with my senior infant class, so I am looking forward to trying this on returning to school. I also had the idea of using the picture book ‘Roaring Rockets’ to introduce the children to the different features of a rocket. The book introduces the key features of a rocket — boosters, control panels, space suits, etc. — in a fun and engaging way. The children would then have a great visual and vocabulary base to build and decorate their own rockets, using toilet paper holders and a variety of arts & crafts materials – coloured paper, crepe paper, stars stickers, glitter etc. We would have a show and tell entitled ‘”My Rocket Adventure”, where the children would present their creation to their peers and come up with their own story about an adventure they would like to undertake in their rocket that they have created. We would link this to literacy by writing our simple stories over the course of a few days. 🙂
Hi Meadhbh,
I really like how you use the different coats each day with the children while exploring the weather, and I’m sure the children really enjoy it too. It is a great way to get them thinking not only about the weather, but it opens up a range of different possibilities to explore – hot and cold, clothes that keep us warm, even parts of the body, there is a lot of linkage here. In my class, I have many children where English is not their first language, and even a simple activity like this repeated every day in a junior/senior infant classroom, would help them to build up their vocabulary of basic words. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Activity set: Weather (Animals in the cold)
This is an area I have explored with my junior infant class as part of Aistear this year when exploring the topic, the polar regions, so I will explain how I used this activity in my classroom.
We used the story ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers as the story for the theme, which lead to discussions about the polar regions and where penguins live. As an Aistear station as part of the theme, we froze small penguin figures in cubes of ice. At that station the next day, it was the children’s job to unfreeze the penguins and set them free, using warm water and salt in pipettes. They loved this activity and it lead to discussions about the melting of ice, what works well and what is needed to melt it. It got them thinking about all the other animals who also live in cold climates, and we discussed them too. Having gone through this module, it could also be used an activity to explore ‘hot and cold’ too!
The children loved the hands-on element of this activity and enjoyed the sensory and problem-solving nature too 🙂
Hi Sandra,
I really love your idea of using the jar of marbles to represent the millions of stars in the sky. It is a great visual way for the children to understand the volume of stars in our milky way, while keeping it relatable to them. It is also is an effective way to link to numeracy for infant classes – counting the number of marbles (stars) and could be used to create simple number problems – ‘if I add another star into my jar, how many will I have? what if I take 2 away?’, the possibility for these kinds of questions are endless! 🙂 thanks for sharing!
Activity set: Space and Aliens
The children in my senior infant class are very interested in aliens so I would focus my lesson around this activity set. I would start the lesson with a firm favourite picture book, ‘Aliens love Underpants’ and continue the discussion from there – what do you think aliens look like, where do they live, explaining that aliens are imaginary creatures from outer space — no one knows what they really look like, so we can imagine anything we like! Then I would encourage my class to create their own alien, firstly making a rough drawing on their whiteboards so they can decide on the different elements they would like to add, and then using play dough. I would extend this into the art lesson for the week, and get the children to paint their aliens they have created using playdough later in the week, designing them with pom poms, glitter, jewels, googly eyes etc.
When the children have finished making their aliens using play dough, myself and the class would move around the room table by table to look at everyone’s creations. We would finish the lesson by singing ‘The Alien Song’ linked below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbpCrp2mbjQ 🙂
Hi Caitlin,
I really like how you’ve decided to start your lesson with an Irish traditional song. The children are not only expanding their knowledge of the SESE curriculum, but are afforded the opportunity to enhance their spoken Irish and Gaeilge vocabulary. Since reading your ideas, I have researched this song and going forward, I will use it as a way to introduce the concept of the moon to my junior class. Thanks for this 🙂
The activity set I would explore with my senior infants class would be ‘The Planets’. I would start with the stimulus picture book ‘There’s No Place Like Space’, which is a rhyming picture book I have used before, which outlines the planets and their order in relation to the sun. We would have a discussion after the story about the planets, how many there is, their relation to the sun and discuss their favourite planets and why. I would then use ‘The planet song’ outlined in the module to reinforce the planets, their characteristics and their relation to the sun. I would then test their knowledge of the planets through a hands on activity, creating our own solar system using our bodies. I would give children in pairs a picture of a planet. I would assign a child as the sun, who would stand in the centre. Each pair group or “planet” would then stand in order from the Sun. I would then play the ‘Planet Song’ again and each group would slowly walk around the sun, like the planets as they orbit the sun.
I think my senior infants would really enjoy this activity and I am looking forward to trying it out when I return in September 🙂
Hi Meadhbh,
I really like how you decided to, after introducing your class to the space concepts, undertake structured/ free play for your early start class. I think that is so important that they have a chance to develop the language needed around this topic before conducting any further, more challenging experiments/inquiry based tasks and often we forget that the children are so young and need the time to develop their skills over a number of days before launching into other tasks. 🙂
My Inquiry based learning activity!
For my senior infant class, this would stem from the question: “How can we build a strong house for the three little pigs?”
Investigating: I would let the children explore different kinds of materials, such as straws, sticks, lego blocks, cardboard, paper, cotton balls etc. I would ask them leading questions such as which ones feel strong, which ones are wobbly, which materials are easy to blow down.
Designing: Can they show what the house might look like. I would let the children draw/discuss/ create their houses using blocks to show what their house might look like, encouraging them to talk about the process, prompting them using questions such as what will your house be made of, how will you make it strong?
Creating: I would encourage the children to use their chosen materials to construct their house for the little pigs.
Evaluating: This is where we would explore if the children’s houses could withstand the big bad wolf! I would encourage the children to take turns being the big bad wolf to see if their houses could stay standing when they are blown on. We would then reflect and discuss what worked well, what could we change.
Communicating: At the end, the children would get the opportunity to present their house, explain the materials used, what worked well during the experiment and what they would change next time.
