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Despite growing up near the town of Ferbane and fifteen minutes from Birr Castle Demense I was unfamiliar with the scientist Mary Ward until a local community hall in Ferbane the former Heritage Centre was renamed in the Ferbane natives honour ‘The Mary Ward Centre’. The renaming of the centre peaked local interest in the scientist and she recently gained national recognition in a RSA advertisement for being the first recorded road death in Ireland. Her road death was from a vehicle that was part of the many scientific and engineering explorations that was happening at Birr Castle Demense druing the mid 1800’s.
Mary Ward ‘loved nature as a child and became interested in small insects and butterflies. In her teens she was given a microscope, which became her life’s interest and she used it to study plants, insects and much of nature.’
‘As well as her interest and skill in microscopy, she was an excellent painter and draughtsman and her illustrations were used in scientific publications. She also wrote books for children, especially on the use of the microscope. She was interested in educating the younger generation and enjoyed teaching. Her educational books also included one on the telescope. ‘ (extract from the Birr Castle Demense website)
So based on Mary Wards interest and love of the telescope as inspriation I would refer to the Esero lesson plan 35 (https://esero.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/35_Make-your-own-telescope.pdf )on how to make your own telescope to introduce the children to the life and work of Mary Ward at Birr Castle Demense and her contribution to the scientific work and desire to educate children on the telescope. This lesson can be expanded further by using a telescope to examine flowers and insects found on our flower walks.
Using the suspension bridge in Birr Castle Demesne as inspiration the children working in small groups will be tasked with designing and building a bridge using a variety of materials. Through this challenge they will explore the ways that different shapes and materials impact the overall success of their design. Throughout each stage of development the children will be required to apply their mathematical knowledge of shape, measures, weight and calculation skills to design, plan, construct and test their bridges capabilities.
Objectives: Students will work together as a team to design and build a bridge that meets a challenge such as:
• a bridge that is at least 20cm. long.
• The bridge must be able to hold the weight of at least one toy car.
• The toy car must be able to roll along the surface of the bridge (optional).Materials:
The children may select from the following materials:
• Blue tack
• Playdough
• marshmallows
• Newspaper
• Cellotape
• Cardboard
• Paper
• Toothpicks
• Lollipop sticks
• Glue
• Straws
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Toy cars
• Building BlocksLesson Content
Introduced to the importance of bridges to people around the world and the changes in bridge design over time. Discuss the images of the suspension bridge at Birr Castle Demense, including it’s purpose, design and materials used for it’s construction. Prior to the building challenges, student teams should be given time to explore and experiment with the materials that they will be using. They can also examine photographs of bridges to see how geometric shapes are incorporated into the design before testing the ways that they can make and connect shapes with their materials. After exploration students should work as a team to draw the design that they will build in response to the challenge. Each bridge must have a deck on which the load can be placed during the challenge. Changes can be made; however, the goal is for the groups to have a plan in mind prior to building.
The children will be given an allotted time frame to construct their bridge. Once constructed the children must test the stability of their bridge to hold weight and how much weight is possible for their bridge to hold (each group must use the same equal unit of measurement).Reflection:
The children can reflect on and evaluate the bridge building and testing challenge, responding to questions such as:
• Did your team build the bridge that was on the original design sheet? If no, what did you need to change?
• Which elements of your final design worked well?
• List materials or tools that you wish you would have had to make the bridge building process more successful.
• If you could change anything that your team did when responding to the challenge it would be:
• What was the best part of the bridge challenge?Hi Emma, I love all your lesson ideas, I’m sure the children would find them very interesting too in particular the art lesson on Mary Ward.
Hi Barbara, the children in my class would love this lesson. Using the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a great introduction to the lesson, which makes it fun and playful for the children. The story leads nicely into the topic of designing a bridge to hold the Billy Goats and it can lead to so many cross curricular opportunities including drama- acting out the goats crossing the bridge, maths -counting how many bricks/sticks are needed to make the bridge, English & Art -early writing & drawing- creating signs to warn people of the troll under the bridge.
Hi Emily, These steps for a wild flower walk are great. It is good for the children to know the different types of flowers and their importance to our environment.
Having registered my garden with the All Ireland Pollinator Plan it has made me more conscious of how the little changes in our garden can make a big impact on the bees and other wildlife within our environment. In our garden we have a wild hedgerow border between us and our neighbours home, to my horror it has been suggested by some that we should remove the hedgerow and replace it with Laurel hedging! I love the wild hedgerow as it changes with each season and is home to an abundant of beautiful flora and fauna., I will now try to the following actions in my home and at school to help the pollinators.
Actions we could take to help pollinators:
• Plant lots of bee friendly flowers & shrubs in pots or flowerbeds. Ensuring the flowers can provide food for bees every month from spring through to the autumn.
• Grow some fruits and vegetables like strawberries, raspberries, peas, courgettes or apples as their flowers will provide food for bees in spring and early summer.
• Create no mow areas (Areas of lawn that are allowed to grow freely without being cut ) These areas encourage the growth of wild flowers and weeds like dandelions and clover which will provide food for the bees.
• Provide some safe places for bumblebees or solitary bees to make their nests such as the long grass at the bottom of the hedgerows near the garden.
In our school we are fortunate to have a large garden which includes an orchard, poly tunnel and a sensory garden so at our next staff meeting I intend to discuss the topic of registering the school garden with the pollinator plan to see if there is more we can do to educate the children on importance of pollinators in our environment.Hi Colette, buddy teaching is great, kids really respond well to learning form each other. I am not familiar with the What the Ladybird Heard, it sounds very interesting and something I will investigate further.
This generation of children are very familiar with the use of digital technology on a daily basis and at times are more capable of using and understanding most digital devices far quicker than some adults. However this ability to use and understand such quick sources of virtual information can come at the price of not developing the other important life skills an example of this is map reading. Children might observe their parents using a sat- nav when travelling to get to unknown destinations without realising that it is a virtual map. In our lesson I would like to get the children to create a 2D map drawing with the help of Google maps. I will set the children the task of creating a map that will bring them to the local playground but they also need to stop at various places to collect items we may need for our trip to the playground along the route eg. Somewhere to borrow a book (Library), a shop that sells sun hats, shop that sells items for a picnic etc. They will use google maps to find these places of interest and help plot them on the map.
I have chosen the I-Lofar telescope as inspiration for a lesson plan for my class. The I-Lofar telescope works on the principal that all objects emit invisible frequency waves and vibrations, the I-Lofar telescope is able to receive the sound vibrations coming into the earths atmosphere from space and can use this information to create images of space. I teach in an ASD preschool class. The children I work with learn mainly through play and sensory experiences so I feel the children would enjoy learning about sound vibrations and invisible frequency waves.
To initially teach the children how vibrations create sound I would make toy guitars with the children using cardboard boxes and elastic bands. When the elastic bands are stretched tightly around the box they can be plucked similar to guitar strings and the vibrations will create sounds.
Then to help the children understand that sound can create vibrations I will make a something similar to a drum with the children. Using a bowl, I will stretch some cling film very tightly across the top of the bowl, I will then place some round sprinkle on top of the cling flim. I will demonstrate to the children that if you place your mouth near the bowl and hum loudly the sprinkles will move with the vibrations from the humming.
