STEM

Over the last two weeks, P3A have been learning about Our Place in Space. The children were building on their existing knowledge of the planets to begin to think about their relationship to each other and the sun.

We discovered the distance between each planet and the sun, as well as what order the planets come in our solar system.

After learning about how all the planets orbit the sun, we created a human solar system! We got in correct planet order and each orbited the sun (the person in the middle) and had to rotate our planet at the same time!! Did you know that some planets rotate clockwise and others spin in an anti-clockwise direction?

After warming up by doing just a few planets in small groups, we then acted out the actions of the entire solar system! Take a look at us!

 

We learned some really cool facts about our planet, planet Earth. We learned that Earth is in what is known as the Goldilocks Zone in our solar system. This is because the temperature here is not too hot, and not too cold, a bit like Baby Bear’s porridge in Goldilocks and the Three Bears!

We also learned that the moon orbits planet Earth, and that is why we sometimes see the moon in different shapes. The moon doesn’t actually ever change shape, it just appears different to us, depending on what phase of it’s orbit we see it in!

Take a look at the experiment we carried out to see this in action. We had to find a dark room to see this at it’s best, and the Literacy Store was the perfect place! The lamp acts as the sun, while we act as the earth, with the moon orbiting us.

‘New Moon’

‘Crescent Moon’

‘First Quarter Moon’

  ‘Gibbous Moon’

‘Full Moon’

The whole thing in action 🙂