Into Outer Space

This week was the start of our exploration into outer space. It has been so fun to learn about all those things up in the sky. I checked out tons of books on space from the library and the kids have been learning so much by just looking through them and asking me questions about the things they see. Aren't books amazing? You don't even need to be able to read to learn from a good book.

We started out close to home with the moon. We talked about the surface of the moon and then made our own bumpy moons by gluing pasta and beans onto paper plates and then covering them in foil.

This was one of my favorites!

We also talked about the phases of the moon and made flip books. It was some awesome practice in cutting, gluing and following directions. They all did such a great job.

On Wednesday we talked about the sun. We learned a little about how hot the sun is and how it affects us here on earth. For a little demonstration, we finger painted with sunscreen! After our papers sat outside for a few days, the sun faded the areas of the paper that weren't covered in sunscreen.

We also got in some fine motor skill practice making sun catchers. The students drew pictures on their papers and then used a toothpick to poke holes along the lines of their pictures.

When they're hung on the window, we could see the sun shining through the holes!

On Friday we were able to start learning to skip count. This is something that we already do everyday during calendar, so the kids caught on really fast. We made piles of 10 beans and then used skip counting to find out how many we had. We also had some practice trying to write the numbers we use when counting by 10.

We then continued our exploration with the stars. We talked about what stars are and then learned about constellations. We read a couple books that told us stories of some of the constellations and used the iPad to look at the constellations that were in the sky at that time.

One of the constellations we learned about was Pegasus, so we made a magic trick to take home to help us remember the story of Pegasus. The kids also got to use their creativity to make their own constellations. They came up with some great ideas! We had a house, a truck and a scorpion, just to name a few!

Remember to send Valentines and something for the kids to collect their Valentines in to school tomorrow. We can't wait for our Valentine's day party!