Space: the final frontier

For the past week, in addition to our regular studies, we have continued learning about space. I have made use of some ready-made lessons from Planbee, a website which offers  'complete ready-to-use primary teaching resources including lesson plans, worksheets, slides and more'. I was wary of paying for these lessons, but actually found them very useful and time-saving and will probably use them again. 

We began with a lesson on the Sun and the Solar System. I hid 'fact cards' around the house and set Charlie the challenge of finding them all. He really enjoyed this.

 

Where else could this card go?

Once Charlie had found all ten cards, I set him the challenge of answering a questionnaire about space, using the information on the cards as guidance.

After that, Charlie set about matching definitions to the correct words.

In our next lesson, we looked at the relationship between the Earth and the Sun and explored why we have night, day and the seasons. We watched this video first:

Our viewing was briefly interrupted by one of the kittens, complete with head cone.

However, once the kitten had been removed, we were able to continue with the lesson by looking at the slides provided with the PlanBee resource.

Charlie and I discussed what we'd read, then he set about recreating the explanation for himself using Lego to represent the Sun and the Earth. After he'd finished, I asked him to explain what he'd learnt using diagrams. His drawings and labelling showed that he had understood the explanation very well.

After we'd finished, Charlie completed an exercise from his Galore Park Junior English book. I had chosen a chapter for him that focuses on the Moon. Charlie read about the Moon landing in 1969 and answered the accompanying questions on the text. Then we watched a clip of the Moon landing on YouTube.

I always try to supplement Charlie's learning with trips out, but my planned trip to the planetarium at Greenwich this week fell through. Luckily, we found an excellent alternative which I will write about in my next post.