Create a lunar landscape

This 100-minute STEAM program helps 1st-grade students understand gravity and how Moon craters are formed. Kids start by jumping and feeling how gravity pulls them down, then they listen to a story about the Moon. Using a sandbox and different stones, they experiment to see how the weight and size of an object change the crater it makes. They learn cool facts, like how heavy and light objects actually fall at the same speed, which often surprises them. Finally, the students use what they learned to design their own lunar landscape and explain their “scientific” results.

SPIRIT Skill Focus

  • Problem-solving 
  • Curiosity, sense of wonder and openness

Basic Information Sheet

Age group/ GradeStudent numberDurationNumber of stagesSubjects connection and relevance
1st grade studentsWhole class100 minutes4 stagesnatural sciences, visual arts, native language (vocabulary expansion, awareness), mathematics

National Curriculum Link and Objectives

Science objectives:

  • Students investigate different types of forces: gravity.
  • Students describe the Moon: craters.
  • Students learn the basic principles of doing scientific research: careful observation and fair comparison.

Arts objectives:

  • Reflecting on images.
  • Describe the impressions evoked by the observation. E.g.: What do I see in this image? How might this image have been created? 
  • Recognising and organising simple shapes.
  • Creating an image (2D or 3D) by deliberately placing objects in space. E.g.: designing a robot, utilising the space on the page

Math objectives:

  • Measuring: bigger, heavier, deeper, etc.

Language objectives:

  • Listening to narrative and artistic-literary texts:
  • Based on age-appropriate spoken stories, students will be able to:
  • Understand the essence of the story;
  • Follow and understand the storyline;
  • Reconstruct the storyline fairly literally;
  • Express personal feelings and opinions about the story;
  • Distinguish between reality and fantasy;
  • Assess the authenticity of story details.
  • Reflecting on word meanings in concrete speaking situations
  • Answer teacher questions about a topic covered within different subject areas:
  • Respond to questions related to meanings