The ideas for this week started building in my head when we moved into this house. There is a little closet under the stairs that I knew would make a perfect place to play in 'outer space'.
I wrote the number on the paper, Gavin and Ellie then put on the right number of star stickers. Ethan and Coco put on as many stars as they could fit!
Star Cookies
Since a star shaped cookie cutter is one of the only shapes I happen to have, I we made sugar cookies to decorate and eat.
Constellations
There are lots of worksheets that have a space theme (see the resources at the bottom of this post). The kids enjoyed the dot-to-dots. Ellie and I later went out star gazing to find some of the constellations we had talked about.
Orbiting Planets
I really wanted to use this idea of having the object for the planets be sized to correct scale, but with the ages of my kids, I decided not to worry about it this year. We roughly picked out larger balls to represent bigger planets. Gavin was being the sun, and the kids then picked balls and ran circles around each other pretending to orbit.
Later in the day Ethan got the balls out again and set up his own solar system with planets copying what we had done earlier.
I cut these out and hung them on the kitchen wall, which has kept Ellie asking all week about each of the planets. It is a fun way to review.
more simple number practice. The kids thought when they were done building their paper rocket is was actually going to blast off, which is what inspired the next activity.
Rocket Explosion
I slipped this in a sheet protector so we could use dry-erase marker. I was impressed Ellie had the ability to sit long enough to do the whole alphabet in one sitting. The sheet has the letters in very light dashes to trace over. If she didn't get it quite right she erased and tried again. She is still not great at writing letters on her own, but tracing over the lines she is getting pretty skilled with.
Books
Top Picks
Brielle: On The Launch Pad-Good practice for counting and recognizing numbers 1-12. Ellie also loved that the numbers were hidden in the pages. She chose this one a lot this week.
Ethan: My Space Adventure-it is a simple board book, but had some fun activities on each pages that all the kids liked (counting, colors, finding pictures etc.)
Oliver Who Would Not Sleep-interesting choice, since he is also not going to bed as easily, since switching to a 'big boy' bed.
Mine: Living in Space and Sun, Moon and Stars. I love the Usborne books. They have great information in them. The kids will listen to them once, but because they are not a 'story' they don't choose them over and over like the others, but the are good 'reference' books for me to remember things that I learned a long time ago.
Resources:
http://homeschoolcreations.com/astronautpreschoolpack.html
http://thoughtsofesme.blogspot.com/2011/01/man-on-moon.html
http://www.learningpage.com/free_pages/galleries/space.html
http://www.hsprintables.com/files/AaLetter_Idea_Bank.pdf
2 comments:
I'm always so impressed with all of the activities you do with your kids. These planet activities look like a great idea. The question is: what did you tell your kids about Pluto?
If only my science class was this fun this year! We learned all those same things... only they came out of a text book. Sounds like all those kids are prepared for the test the sixth graders have to take at the end of the year. Do they want to come to Utah to take the test for me? :)
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