Personal Space

 One of our Quest sessions recently was spent looking at personal space. How much space does one person need and how much space are we comfortable with? We discovered that some people don't mind others getting quite close to them, while some prefer a lot of space.

We also looked at how people mark their space - with personal effects, barriers such as walls / fences. Countries often show ownership of their space by flying a flag, and people show their affiliation with a country by displaying a flag at competitions like the Olympics or World Cup sports events. 

Some students designed their own flags, and some completed quizzes on flags. We have a few flag experts in our groups who taught me a thing or two - great to see them sharing their knowledge with others! 

Here is a flag puzzle you might like to try at home...

Next we looked at the world population and how space is more limited in some countries than others. We looked at design ideas for small spaces. Some students chose to design 'tiny homes', a dream room, or a space for nature. Creative design can help us to come up with solutions for problems and it was great to see the many varied ideas that children had. 

This population growth animation was popular and contains a lot of information about how the world's population has changed over the years since 1AD. 

This learning helps children to see that everyone experiences life differently - some enjoy being around others a lot, some need more space. It also allowed them to look at how we can design solutions to help us feel more comfortable with the space we have. 

SPACE

 This term we are looking at the concept of space. As many children in Quest are keen on outer space we have started by looking at that, so they can share their knowledge and build on their interests.

WHAT'S OUT THERE? We looked at the solar system and our place in space, measuring out the distance each planet is from the sun and from each other with toilet paper! Kids first had to try to name the planets and then put them in order. We learnt a mnemonic to help us remember the order. Some made up their own mnemonics. We discussed other ways to remember facts, and talked about other uses for mnemonics (eg to help us remember things we might need to know in college / uni). This website on the scale of the universe was a popular one for exploring our place in space. 

SPACE EXPLORATION - TELESCOPES. We looked how people have discovered things about space - using curiosity and careful observation. We thought about how stars have been used for hundreds of years to help people navigate. We looked at the story of Galileo Galilei - how he first used a telescope to look up and how he questioned the popular thinking of the day that the universe was earth centric (it was thought that everything orbits the earth). Galileo agreed with another theory of the time - that the earth orbited the sun. This was against the beliefs of the church at the time and resulted in Galileo being put under house arrest for the rest of his life. We talked about the fact that science understandings have changed over the years, as technology advances and as people learn more, and sometimes people who propose new ideas might be less than popular. Next we looked at Hubble Space telescope and the fact that after years of planning and creating, when launched in 1990 the $1.5 billion telescope had a problem with one of the
mirrors that caused blurry photos. We used this story to discuss what to do if we come up against a problem - how do people deal with problems? So we saw that when discovering new things it takes curiosity, observation, creativity, determination. Sometimes we can come across people who disagree with our ideas, or problems that seem difficult to fix. But that is all part of the journey of learning. 

SPACE EXPLORATION - PEOPLE IN SPACE. If you went to space what would be good? What would you miss? What would be difficult? We thought about what it would be like living on the ISS (International Space Station). We thought about what would be different to living and working on earth. We are taking part in an International Space Chilli Project - growing chilli seeds we have been sent from Mexico from a NASA scientist alongside many others around the world. Some students came up with ideas for how to grow these plants if we were in space and we are going to try some of those ideas and see how they grow. The idea is to track their growth (they are to be grown inside) and see if there is a difference between ones growing in space and ones grown on earth. 

SPACE EXPLORATION - TERRAFORMING. Terraforming is making something uninhabitable into something suitable for human life. If humans are to live on Mars one day there are lots of issues that need thinking through and planning for. We talked about what people NEED to live, and what are nice extras but not needed. We had a debate about whether computers are a need or a want for people. We had to be creative with ideas for how humans might eventually live on another planet, and how we could not only make it liveable, but also enjoyable - to look after people's physical and mental health.