During the month of February Junior and Senior Infants’s Aistear journey took us from earth to outer space! We began by creating a KWL Chart, which involved the children first listing the things that they KNOW already about Space and then what they WOULD like to know or like to find out about Space. Mrs Brennan was amazed at the vast amount of prior knowledge the Junior and Senior Infants expressed before our learning began!
We learned about the planets in our solar system, about the difference between gravity on earth and in space and about the first astronaut to land on the moon, Neil Armstrong. We read lots of space themed story books, e.g. Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort and How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers. The eagle eyed children recognised straight away the familiar animations on the cover of How to Catch a Star….we discovered we had another book by the same author in our library – The Incredible Book Eating Boy! Lee, Caitlín and Aibhilín brought in some fantastic space story and factual books from home. We especially enjoyed the book The Darkest Dark by Chris Hadfield, it tells the story of a little boy who was fascinated by space and dreamed of becoming an astronaut one day but he was afraid of the dark! When we were exploring the topic of gravity we watched a youtube clip of a real astronaut brushing his teeth in space, his name was Col. Chris Hadfield….the little boy’s dream did come true!
In the creative station we made flying saucers, rockets from 2D shapes and playdoh aliens. At the Junk Art area we created our very own rockets. During Role Play our ground controllers manned the space station and successfully oversaw many astronauts on their missions to the Moon and beyond. Passports had to be filled in and issued for each astronaut and a number of safety checks had to be carried out on our rocket with the data entered into our Log Book before lift off. On their return the astronauts reported back to base on their findings. In the construction area we made rockets using the giant polydrons. The literacy station allowed us to become authors as we created our very own space books. During exploratory play the children searched the sandbox for squidgy aliens and stars of all sizes.
At the end of the month we completed our KWL Chart by listing all the things that we had LEARNED about Space. The topic of Space proved to be very popular with the children with the scope for further learning endless! Please take a look at some of the photos that captured our learning journey.
