Olives Students explore space

One would have thought that in the post exam week lull before the Christmas break Standard Four at Olives Rehabilitation School would be taking it easy… but no, if you had peeked through the window grills today you would have been privy to a hive of activity within. The 14 children of Standard Four are undertaking a week-long project exploring Space, specifically our Solar System. Science is easily the favorite subject of most students and the syllabus for this group requires them to have a basic understanding of the moon and its rotation but I was amazed to discover that most children did not realize that Earth was a planet or that there were other planets out there in our Solar System!

We spent Monday learning more about stars, shooting stars and planets and the possible existence of ‘other life’ out there… we even designed our own funky colored aliens and coded alien ‘math’ language.

Today we learnt some planet facts and designed our own mnemonic to remember the names and order of the planets with! Then, after break, we began work on designing and building our own rocket, based on drawings, pictures and photos of the real things. This was a huge team building exercise and fantastic to watch as the children set to work.

Quiet ones suddenly stepped forward full of inspiration whereas those usually sure of themselves in an academic environment were less confident in this freer situation. There were fraught moments when boxes fell or tape was inadequate but having discussed the ways and means of completing a task as a team and making everyone feel involved and good about themselves this little class of African children really surpassed themselves. They were so proud of their final product and I am so proud of them because they worked together to produce a creative masterpiece that they can actually climb into and set off for ‘newly-discovered’ (learnt!) Jupiter or Mars! 3… 2… 1… LIFT OFF!

- Sophie

Olives Students explore space