Today’s session started with the children on the floor on a big carpet sharing their memories and thoughts with Sharon about what they enjoyed about their trip the previous Wednesday to the Planetarium in Armagh. The children were full of chat with memories still fresh about the fantastic simulator roller coaster ride Armageddon. Making the rockets and launching them had also been a very popular and exciting activity.

Prior to our session we had watched a science clip on YouTube about constellations in the night sky and the different Zodiac constellations. The children were all able to identify their birth sign based on their birthday and were interested in the idea that their star sign could tell them something about themselves. We chatted about horoscopes and how people like to read them for fun.

Sharon had put up some pictures of the zodiac constellations up on the interactive whiteboard for us to look at.

Activity one involved the children working individually, in pairs and in groups of 3 to make their own zodiac pictures using their bodies to grate the shapes. I had brought in a few sets of battery operated fairy lights and we draped these around the shapes that the children made. The favourite ones to recreate were Sagittarius, Gemini and Scorpio. The children all participated extremely well in the activity and enjoyed it and we got some great aerial views of the constellation shapes.

After that the children were then tasked with creating their own constellations. They were given black paper, white paint and a cotton bud to use as their paintbrush. There was great concentration as the children made up their own star patterns using dots and then joined the dots to make a star picture. The results were varied and very creative. We discussed the half human half creature type constellations and the children took this as their starting point to invent their own mythical constellations.

Here are the results.

As they finished their work they came up to show their inventions to Sharon and tell her a little story about the constellation that they had invented.

Sharon emailed us a constellation which she drew but she didn’t join up the dots. She asked the children to interpret the dots to make a constellation picture. We discussed it for a while and the children suggested it might resemble a human with the head of a giraffe or a horse, playing football!

Here are the end results.

Once again the children had a great session exploring the idea of patterns in the night sky. We look forward to welcoming Sharon into our classroom for our final session after the Easter break as we wrap up what has been a tremendously positive learning experience for all the kids in the class. I have watched how their participation in the project has helped them to look at art in a holistic way and how they have shaped and moved the project forward with their very personal and individual contributions to the project on their own journey of self-discovery.