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Hi Rachel, I love your design of your own dark sky place for infants. As an infant teacher I am going to take your ideas on board and implement them into my own classroom in September.
Consider how many Songs / Poems /Art can you think of to connect us with the Night Sky?
As a Junior Infant teacher I have found many songs, poems and art pieces that connect us to the night sky. Ths children in this age group seem to have a great interest in the night sky and I believe songs, poems and art help to spark their interest.
Some of the songs and poems we do are:
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star- Myself and the children create actions every year to this nursery rhyme when we are exploring our space theme. We also integrate this song into our nativity play at Christmas time.
Star Light, Star Bright- We also do this poem each year when we are exploring the space theme. The children love learning this poem as it always leads to discussion on ‘wishing on a star’.
Each year we also pick an artist to look at and last year we chose Vincent Van Gogh and based art lessons on his ‘Starry Night’ piece of art. The students really enjoyed engaging in these lessons.
Hi Damien, I agree that a KWL chart is a great starting point to assess the students’ previous knowledge on nocturnal animals in the local area.
How you would engage your learners to explore biodiversity in your local area and the possible impacts of light pollution on local biodiversity?
I will begin by sparking the children’s interest in the local biodiversity with an interactive classroom discussion or nature photo quiz featuring local species from my area such as hedgehogs, native birds, insects and wildflowers.
I will then organise a local biodiversity walk around nearby habitats such as parks and woodlands. I will put the students into pairs or groups and give them a checklist of things that they may see. I will then introduce the topic of light pollution. We will discuss how artificial light affects moths, bats, or nesting birds. We will explore night sky visibility in low versus high light pollution areas. I will pose the question ‘How might light pollution affect the creatures we saw earlier?’. In groups, we will investigate how insects behave in the dark and when light such as torches are used. To conclude our topic we will create a poster to raise awareness in our school.Hi Olive, I too think mind mapping is a very good tool to find out what the children’s knowledge is on a topic before starting your teaching. I also love the idea of doing a research project on light pollution in their own homes.
Detail how light pollution is impacting your local area and how you would engage your learners to explore this.
I live in a rural area in Donegal and it benefits from generally low levels of artificial lighting. Therefore, you can often see stars clearly, especially away from local streetlights. However, there have been some concerns recently over large, static security lighting on tall masts in Donegal that can project visible light upto 20 km away—creating glare and disturbing wildlife.
An activity I would introduce into the infant classroom would be a star count during story time. Firstly, I would use a dark room or blackout tent with glow stickers to represent stars. I would let each pupil place stars, then cover with lamps and lights to visually show how stars fade when it’s too bright. Finally, I would introduce a simple bedtime story called Hello, Star by Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic & Vashti Harrison about night being dark—not because it’s scary, but because then the stars can shine. We will finish by discussing some actions that we can take at home to help with light pollution such as switching off at home when lights are not in use.
Hi Aisling, I really like your idea of linking your observations to art and creating a visual representation of what has been observed.
Plan to observe the Moon – which phase of the Moon is best for observing in the morning from school? What dates will that be in 2024- 2025?
The third quarter is the best phase of the moon for observing from school in the morning. I think that this is lovely idea as it shows to the children that the moon doesn’t just disappear during the day, it’s just that we can’t see it at different phases. After researching the dates for 2024-2025, the only dates that the last quarter will be visible in the mornings when we return to school will be August 26th and October 24th. I love the idea of using a moon observation log to look at how the moon looks each day for a month. I will plan to start this on October the 2nd as this is when the new moon is set to be for that month. We will begin by watching the video that ESA have given in this module on moon phases and eclipses. We will then observe the moon in the morning for the month. At the end of the month myself and the students will discuss the results of our observation.
One Year on Earth – Understanding the Seasons Resource (ESA)
I have been a teacher in the infant classroom for 4 years now and there are a lot of lessons based on the seasons of the year. After reading the Understanding the Seasons lessons, I now realise that I haven’t been teaching the seasons properly. We do a lot of our work on seasons around what a tree looks like at certain times of the year and I see that’s one of the lessons on this resource. However, I just show the children the trees at different seasons and we didn’t go into that much detail on the why and how. After reading through this lesson I have a better understanding of how to approach season based lessons and teach it in a way that the children will have a greater understanding of the seasons. I will start off by teaching the children how many days are in a year. We will then look at and discuss how Earth looks during various seasons. We will assign the seasons to the various pictures and discuss why they have chosen each image. Finally, we will talk about how seasonal change can also be seen from space.
Activity-Rockets
I will first use a stimulus of a sound of someone counting down and a rocket blasting off and ask the children if they know what it could be and why they think this. I will then show them some rockets and assess prior knowledge. Have you ever seen a rocket? Why do we use rockets? I will read ‘Aliens in Underpants Save the World’ as the Infant kids really enjoy this book. We will talk about the book. We will then look at rockets and how we may be able to make a few with different materials. The children will then draw their rockets and in teams choose materials to make it. We will then make predictions on ‘Which rocket will fly the highest?’ Why do you think this? We will conduct the investigation and log our findings. We will finish off by looking at other things that can fly through the air.
Activity-Seasons- What clothes to wear?
I would start by assessing the children’s prior knowledge about the seasons through singing the song the Seasons Song from Youtube. I would then ask some open ended questions about the song and how we might know what season it is. I would then read a book called ‘A Stroll through the Seasons’ by Kay Barnham. We would then talk about the seasons in the book and what they notice about the people’s clothes in the book as we go through the seasons. I wonder why we wear clothes? Why do people wear different clothes for different types of weather? The children will be given out the pictures of the seasons to colour in and we will use different types of clothes to dress teddy/dolly for different types of weather. We will finish off with a game in which the children will dress up for different seasons/weather and the rest of the class have to guess the season/weather.
Space and aliens activity
I would start off the lesson by asking a wondering question about space and aliens. For example: I wonder what aliens look like? I wonder what kind of things you would see in space? I would then ask the children to discuss this with their groups and draw something related to the questions. I will then play a Space and Alien game that can be found on Youtube to attract the attention of the children. We will then learn some songs and some facts about space and talk about aliens and what that means to them. The children will be given some junk art materials and in their groups they will be asked to make their version of what they think space looks like with aliens in it. We will finish off by exploring what kinds of things would aliens like/dislike about living on Earth and the reasons for this.
