Emily Vaughan
Blog Task
Spring Equinox Activities with Primary School
Pupils
For this activity we were learning about the spring
equinox. Schools were visiting our University to take part in many different
activities outdoors or indoors using many resources and creative ideas to
celebrate the Spring Equinox. For this task for the school sessions to take
part in, all Primary Education Studies students were split into groups to make
their task for the children. The children from the three primary schools
visiting with the classes ranging from year four to year six.
Our task as a group was to research what the Spring
Equinox is and design an engaging activity for the children from the primary
schools. We could use type of resources for our activity such instruments
especially if we were to use the outdoor learning centre as they are kept
there. The activities we had to plan would be approximately 30 to 50 minutes
long so the children had time to get settled and understand the activities but
also to join in. My group that came together was a group of six but then we split ourselves
into two groups of three as there were many pupils that visited the day we were
presenting our activities to the children. Each group had about 10 to 15
children to be able to do the task.
My group had about 10 children and our activity was to
show the children how to use garage band which is showing the children how to
make their own music as we wanted to make the theme about spring so we planned
to use the music linking towards this so for example using happy, bright music.
We thought that the children would engage to this activity a high amount as a
lot of children I discovered when showing them are interested in music and this
was an exciting activity for them to
take part in. By making this activity work we had to use the resources of many
computers so we used a computer room for the hour when having the first group
of children to make this task work. When
setting the computers up for the children to use we noticed garage band was not
shown on the computer so we had to come up with another idea which then we used
scratch which at first was hard to demonstrate as our group we did not know
anything about but with us communicating with one another and figuring it out
quickly on the spot while the children were waiting patiently to listen to our
directions we were able to set this up for them and direct them in the right
way. This activity was changed into drawing a picture on a spring equinox theme
and what they knew and learnt about the topic as Lecture Dylan and Lecturer
Nick had presented a 30 minute presentation to the primary school children
about what it was and if they knew any information about it already, this was
before we were sent away to begin our activities. This concluded us that we
were able to work together and on the spot when something went misleading to
plan and the children were engaging with the task and able to pick up on the
spring equinox idea but also were able to communicate with each member of our
group for support if needs be.
Spring equinox is described to happen twice a year, on
the equinoxes the sun shines directly on the equator and the length of day and
night is nearly equal but not quite. There is an equinox in March time as it
marks the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator, the imaginary line in
the sky above the earth’s equator from south to north and vice versa in
September.
The word equinox comes from a Latin and means ‘equality
of night and day.’ The equinox occurs at two specific moments in time when the
sun is exactly above the equator which is contrary to popular belief, the
equinox doesn’t last 24 hours. In the northern hemisphere, the spring equinox
or vernal equinox happens around the spring time that is where the spring comes
from as March represents the beginning of autumn and spring comes along in
September.
References:
Dictionary.com(2018) Available at: http://www.dictionary.com(Accessed: 11th
April 2018).
Spring
Equinox- Vernal Equinox(2017) Available
at:https://www.timeanddate.com (Accessed: 11th April 2018).
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