3..2..1... Blast Off!!

Following our night/day week we learned about Space!!! We reviewed the sun and moon and the facts that we learned about them the previous week. This week was a full week for the preschoolers (the best kind of week), so we got a lot more done!! :) The letter of the week was Yy.  We made a yarn Yy to reinforce those fine motors by gluing on the strands and forming Yy's with the yarn. 
What made me smile was during this activity all I heard was, "Miss Jansen my hands are very sticky!'

During our space week we learned about each of the 8 planets.  We learned one fact about each one.  I was very suprised that they knew that facts about each planet, saying some of the names was a little rough, but by Friday most of us had it mastered!! 

On Monday we also learned about the biggest star in the sky, the sun!  We made a sun craft to go with it.  We also played a game, where we were in rocket ships and went around the room and visited each planet that we have learned about so far.  (We did this every day for the week).
These suns turned out very cute and very bright!

Wednesday we made a super cute craft.  We learned about 3 more planets today, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  We also involved our moon in with the planets.  We talked about how a man went on the moon and how we get to the moon, so of course we had to make balloon rockets!! The balloon rockets showed how fast our spaceships can get to and how they can be even faster than our rockets.  Check out our album for more pictures with the balloon rocket.

 

For the craft on Wedneday we did a space scene with an astronaut.  Each preschooler got a circle and they had to water color their circle, which was the planet.  I was impressed how they copied the planets on the board when they were watercoloring.  They even said the name of the planet that they were doing!  I was so proud! :) Again check out more pictures from our craft in the album.  If you look closely you will see who the astronauts are!  We also added some glitter to our scenes for stars!

 

Then came Friday, the last day of our space unit, which we call our Fabolous Fun Friday, which it was!  We played a game called astronaut, astronaut, alien (like duck, duck, goose).  We just switched the words to match our theme.  We also had another journey to see all the planets in our space ships since we learned about all 8!! 

I combined our math and letter time together today because it covered both. We made rocket-name-ships.  They first had to count the number of letters in their name and then go count out that correct number of squares to fit their name.  We then glued on our squares - added our name and waahlaaa a name rocket ship!  We also incorporated our age into this project.  However old you are is how many stars you have to sponge on.  Some of them got a little carried away with the star painting and added 6 instead of 5.  His reaction was, "Oh shoot!  I messed up!"  I just smiled and said that everyone makes mistakes. :)  Here are some of the name rockets. 

I must not forget the most fun thing we ever did (as the preschoolers would tell me) was we made moon sand!!  We talked about how the moon was made of sand, (not cheese :) ) and how it was very dusty!  Let me tell you our moon sand was very dusty!  They loved it and that's all that matters.  In some of the pictures you can see just how dusty it was. 
For moon sand I mixed sand and cornstarch together.  I just dumped the ingredients until I got a white colored sand that was super soft!  They each got to take a little bag full home with them.

We also made the letter Yy out of ourselves.  I don't have pictures of every preschooler doing it because my camera died right after I took this picture. 

That was our fun filled week about Space! I hope you all enjoyed reading what we all did this week.   We got some much done and had a BLAST! (sorry had to add that into there) :)   People wonder why I am so exhausted by the afternoons on some days, but it's all worth it! :)

On to next week, where we will learn about dogs!!