Space: A New Frontier

In January, we launched our new space theme by watching a video of the 1^st Moon landing. Our curiosity piqued, we set about asking questions, such as, “How did they launch a rocket into space?” and “How old was Neil Armstrong when he went to the Moon?”

In science, we have been fascinated by finding out about what's out in space. We’ve been learning about what a solar system is, including the specifics of our solar system (a sun orbited by eight planets and other celestial bodies). We’ve learnt about theoretical models of the solar system as created by Ptolemy and Copernicus and why scientific understanding has changed since Ptolemy. We then developed our knowledge further by creating our own representations of the solar system, thinking carefully about the relative size of planets, their distances from the sun and the speed at which they orbit the sun.

In writing, we learnt all about the 1st Moon landing and used this to build on our knowledge of recounts, looking at informal letters and diary entries as well as more formal news paper reports. 

In art, we learnt about retrofuturism and used a collagraph (printing) plate to create our very own  space image.

As a fantastic end to our topic, we visited the Space Centre to bring our learning to life and find out more about the space race, lunar rovers, space technology and astronauts in space. Using our new knowledge, we designed and created our own lunar rovers that needed to travel over rough terrain, carry moon rock and transport astronauts.