Understanding the World: Science

Space: the Final Frontier

I’ll admit it now, I am a sci fi geek. I love doing the space topic! To shoe horn Space into the long term plan as a theme, it appears under the topic of ‘science’ although it may not be very scientific.

There are many different aspects of science that you could teach in Reception and Nursery, but my favourites are space (obviously) and mini-beasts.

There are many different activities for a Space term topic. See this brainstorm..

For literacy and numeracy, I have already posted about the Space Journal. It’s a really fun resource that the children enjoy making.

The Space Journal has room for Expressive Arts and Design, Literacy, Numeracy and Understanding the World. The front page has room for children to design their own space agency badge. They can name their space agency and design a logo. There’s also pages for non-fiction information, an alien fact file, an astronaut passport page, a phonics page for non-sense words, labelling a space rocket and a maths page.

The Space Journal has a thematic approach to the space topic. Avoiding worksheets, the Space Journal provides writing frames for the children to write whatever they think of.

My introduction to the Space topic involves children boarding a space shuttle and taking a journey into space.

However, before they can do this, they need a Space Passport!

You could either use the Astronaut Passport from the Space Journal, or you are welcome to use the Space Passport below.

You could take a photo of each child dressed up in the space costumes to appear in their passport (which is what I like to do) or you could ask the children to draw a picture of themselves to assess their drawing and mark making.

Once children have their space passports they can travel into space!

The Spaceship

If you line up the chairs like the inside of an aeroplane, there are some lovely inflight videos.

This is the cutest inflight video ever!

Children love the size comparison video. They get very excited when they see that celestial objects continue to be larger and larger, although I’m not sure if the little ones understand the end of the video.

And for your music lesson!

You can find the lyrics for this song on the last page of the lesson plan! They can also be found at the end of this post.

The lesson plan for An Introduction to Space can be found here. This lesson can easily be adapted to fit in with every element of the Space Journal.

There are some lovely space books to share with the children ranging from non-fiction to story books.

	On the Moon A non-fiction picture book explaining about what it is like on the moon.
	Krong Fantastic for phonics, this book has a lot of non-sense words. Wonderful for the ‘Alien Language’ page of the Space Journal.
	Aliens Love Underpants I personally don’t like this story, but the children love it. It’s a great talking point to discuss what aliens look like and inspiring the children’s clay aliens.

I could go on… and on and on and on! I love space as a topic for the children so I will post again with more lesson ideas!

Please leave a comment if you have anything to share!