THE FINAL FRONTIER...

Space was the topic for Year 2 at Paxton School, Gipsy Hill. Here Maxine MacPherson, their teacher explains what they did and how Roamer became a natural focus for their activities.

After some initial work on the solar system, the children recognised the planets and knew their order from the sun. The planets were set out on the floor and Roamer introduced. The scenario was that Roamer lived on Pluto which, being the furthest from the sun, is cold. Deciding that a summer holiday was needed Roamer decided to go in search of some sunshine on Mercury (the planet nearest the sun). Visiting all the other planets on the way, when Roamer arrived at Mercury he had to play a "happy tune" (discussion here about different musical "moods") to persuade its inhabitants that he was only coming for a short visit and not invading. (Obviously Roamer could not speak their language nor they his so music was their only means of communiction - shades of "Close Encounters")

"This is when we stuck the planets on the floor and trying to get the rocket roamer around the planets until it gets to mercury."

The children themselves decided that they would play a tune at each planet and produced 2 different types of music. P4 was for when "Roamer Rocket" reached each planet and P5 was for when it eventually got to Mercury.

All the pupils participated in creating the programs and designing the "Milky Way Mat" with its various constellations and planets for the Roamer Rocket to travel through. Their investigations were shown to the whole school in our class assembiy at the end of term.

We also did a play about the relationship of the Sun and the 9 planets that make up the solar system. Each pupil was a heavenly body!

"Our assembly is all about space and the solar system and we took a picture before we done our assembly and we were watching the roamer."

"This is a picture of our class before we went into do our assembly. We made our own costumes."

The pupils are now busy elaborating upon the Roamer music in their music lesson, using a variety of instruments.

The children have thoroughly enjoyed the project and I can see that we will all be Roamering well into the future.

"We are going into a dome called Starlab. Starlab is a huge piecs of material."