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You have lots of great ideas here Bernie. I didn’t know of Nasa’s Kids club but I will be looking at it for this coming school year. I also like your idea for Fizzy Rockets. Having been in the senior end for many years, I look forward to trying this with the junior classes.
Having completed this course, I would like to introduce Space Week into our school. Space fascinates children from Junior Infants up to sixth class. The ideas from this course will provide a great starting point for this.
We will introduce space by reading a variety of texts to the children-both fact and fiction. eg. Little People-Big Dreams Neil Armstrong, Meanwhile back on Earth by Oliver Jeffers, Goodnight Spaceman by Michelle Robinson which is based on Tim Peake.
We will also watch Chris Hadfield and his Youtube videos from space. We watched some last year and the children were fascinated with them.
We will also use the BBC Bitesize website where they have a virtual rocket for children to embark on the journey into outerspace. https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/20140304-how-big-is-space-interactive/
The children will investigate different types of rockets such as foam rocket and paper rocket. Working in groups, children will plan, design and create the rockets and predict which rocket will travel the furthest.
As we are local to Armagh Planetarium, we engaged with them and had a visit from Dr Rok who brought the dome show to school. It was a thoroughly enjoyable morning. Children were able to see what space looked like, see planets up close etc. It was all completely free.This is a fabulous detailed lesson plan. I really like the ideas of using vaseline to demonstrate waterproof and not. It is something that I will add to my lesson. Thank you for sharing.
The lesson I would choose would be animals in the cold. For December, my theme is Winter and this lesson would fit in here. Instead of just focusing on emperor penguins, we will look at snow leopards and polar bears. We would also look at different breeds of penguins such as Gentoo penguins. During story time, we will read Jonty Gentoo-The adventures of a penguin by Julia Donaldson and Snow Leopards by Nicole Popperhager.
I have a lesson called Hibernate, migrate or adapt where children have to sort animals into the different categories. We will also put toy animals into a bowl of water to freeze, and the children will have to release the animals during Aistear. For a cross curricular element, the children will create clay penguins. In Literacy, we will create animal fact files.
We will also complete a lesson during the summer term on animals from hot climates where we will compare and contrast with the animals from cold climates.Your lesson plan Sandra is great. I like the idea of the Alien Landscape and the comparison between their homes and our homes on earth. Thanks for sharing.
Activity Set: Space and Aliens
I will use story books and picture books in our lessons such Alien in Underpants save the world by Claire Freedman, Welcome to Alien School by Caryl Hart, The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers etc.
I would show the children a picture of Space and ask them questions such as:
What do you see?
What is missing?
Where are we at the minute-what planet?
I will place pictures of the planets on the space picture to demonstrate where they are.
Do you know anything else that is up in space-space station. We will add the picture to the space picture.
Do you think there are people or creatures living on the other planets?
What do you think they look like?
We will watch a video by SciShowKids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk5FUDaP5XU&list=PLw2cuKNQvZ2c5UQcwMS4Fg05UdiT3-gs4&index=13
After reading one of the story books, I will tell the children we are going to create our own Aliens. They can be like people living on this planet or very different.
I will ask the children about what they look like using handheld mirrors-2 eyes, 2 ears, nose, mouth etc. Children will sketch their Aliens on Whiteboards or on paper.
We will create our Aliens using Clay for our art lessons.Activity Set: The Sun and Shadows
This lesson is for Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class.
I would start by asking the children if they have ever seen a shadow? What does a shadow look like? Is it dark or is it bright? What do you think makes shadows?
We will then make a shadow frame. It is made with a piece of cardboard for the frame and contact paper or a laminating sheet for inside the frame. Children will place blocks/ cut out pictures/ counting bears etc on the frame and see what shadow it shows underneath. Children will investigate how they can make the shadows change by lifting their frame higher up and lower down etc.
Another simple experiment is making shadow people using pipe cleaners. Children will create their own people by intertwining pipe cleaners. We will place them on the tarmac outside and draw their shadow using chalks. We will check them each hour and draw around the shadows. At the end of the day, the children can check how the shadows have moved as the direction of the sun has changed.This is a fabulous lesson Sharon. Thank you for sharing it. I am moving back to infants after being in the senior room and this is a lesson that I would love to use in my classroom. Story is great for engaging pupils in the younger classes.
In September I will be teaching Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class. My inquiry based lesson will be on floating and sinking.
Materials: Large basin, water, coin, rubber duck, sharpener, nail, cork, cube etc.Sheet with pictures of items for predictions, 2 hula hoops for sorting items, vocabulary for the inquiry on cards-float, sink, predict, result.
Children will begin by looking at and feeling each of the items we are going to use in our inquiry. Using their prediction skills and simple tick or x, children will predict which items they think will float or sink. Items that will float get a tick, items that will sink will get an x. Children will take it in turns to place items into the basin. Items that float will be placed into one hula hoop and items that sink will be placed into the other hula hoop. When we have completed the activity, the children will compare their predictions will the results. To extend the activity for children in first class or more able children, they can draw their predictions instead of tick or x. Teacher questioning will help the children to question predictions and results.Hi everyone,
My name is Pearl. I will be teaching Junior Infants, Senior Infants and 1st class this coming school year. I have always had a fascination with space and love watching to see when the ISS is passing over Ireland using https://issinfo.net/passes/ireland/dublin .
When teaching space to older classes 4th, 5th and 6th class, we followed Chris Hadfield and the children were fascinated by his videos from Space.