The Night Sky
A list with resources for teaching children about the different star constellations, planets of our solar system and other celestial bodies such as asteroids, comets, meteors and meteorites. Including lesson plans, activity ideas and links to useful websites where children can look at constellations in the sky. Activities could be done in preparation for an evening session where children go outside for an evening stargazing session.
Fruit Solar System
Build a Solar System using mostly fruit. Encourage children to take an educated guess as to which planet each item represents to develop their thinking skills. A great way of showing the relative sizes of planets in the solar system.
Solar System Image and Information Set *suitable for home teaching*
High quality images of our solar system. Includes images and information on the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Earth’s Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, asteroids, comets, meteors and meteorites, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, and moons of the solar system. The images could be shown in class or used to research information on the different bodies in the solar system.
Primary School Activity Booklet
Learn about the Hubble Telescope and the sky at night. Pages 10-13 on the PDF show how to make a planesphere to view the stars at different times of the year. It also shows the shapes and names of many constellations. Children could research the names of constellations and make links to Ancient Greeks.
Orion the Giant
The story of Orion the Giant is a lovely way to introduce stars to young children and can be linked to work on Myths and Legends in literacy. The story is from the UNAWE website which contains many resources for inspiring children of all ages about the wonders of the universe.
Heavens above- Skychart
A website which allows children to view the stars. It allows you to put in a date and view which stars will be visible. Could be used to introduce the star constellations to children. One activity idea is to get children to make small holes to represent a particular star constellation in the bottom of an empty crisp tube then hold them up and see the stars in them.
Earth and space: space presenters
Produced by the Hamilton Trust, these resources give details of six lessons on space based on QCA scheme of work. This includes lesson plans, practical activities and all student materials.
The lessons are:
• Earth, Moon and Sun
• Day and night
• Eclipses and seasons
• Moon phases
• Star constellations
• Planets
