The Solar System

Topics Reception/Year 1
This unit is part of Changes within Living Memory Transport

Objectives

History

  • Learn about events which were significant nationally or globally.
  • Know where people and events fit within a chronological framework.
  • Ask and answer questions, understand some ways we find out about the past.

Science

  • Identify and describe the planets in the solar system and understand their relation to the sun.
  • Ask simple scientific questions and recognise that these can be answered in different ways.

Lesson Planning

Children look at actual pictures of Mars and begin to understand that space exploration is an on-going as well as a historical undertaking. They learn about the solar system and produce a drawing, then learn the names of the planets in order.

Teaching Outcomes
To understand how space exploration has been an important part of the history of the last half century and how it continues to develop in the future.
To understand how the earth is one of nine planets all of which orbit the sun.

Children can:

  • Begin to know we live on planet earth and there are other planets, moons and stars in our solar system.
  • Understand that space exploration is still continuing and that we have sent a rocket to Mars and can look at actual pictures of that planet.

You Will Need

  • Globe: large orange or yellow ball
  • Books about the solar system