Your children have been so excited about everything space. Go figure, the week we introduced the sun, the weather turned on us and was all clouds, dark sky and rain! Oh well, never fear. We made our own sunshine in Blue Room.
We worked on fine motor skills by tearing tissue paper into small pieces to fill in the middle of our hot sun.
And then we worked with triangles to glue the rays.
I love to see our children working independently!
Everyone's suns turned out differently - some of our friends made patterns with the rays while others made the entire sun orange or all yellow or opposite colors.
While the big kids did pre-k activities, our younger preschool friends work a lot as a team on projects. They especially love big group puzzles.
Where to start?
"Look teacher I almost finished Earth," explained S.
We did it!!!
While exploring the sun, we shared how all of the planets orbit the sun. M was the sun, our friends lined up as the planets, and our three friends in the corner L, L, and E were the stars twinkling in the distance. Although this activity was a hit with the children, it did not go as well as I thought, as spacial awareness at this age can be difficult. So we decided to head outside.
L about to start with Mercury's orbit being the closest to the sun.
M worked on Venus's orbit
G worked on our 3rd rock from the sun's orbit -- Earth!
S worked on Mars orbit.
Because Jupiter has such a big orbit, L and P worked together.
E worked on Saturn's orbit.
A worked on Uranus's orbit.
And lastly, S our smallest friend in the class made the biggest orbit -- Neptune.
After much patience and playing in the hedges and drawing our planets with our sidewalk chalk, it was finally time to give our orbit tracks a try.
The children did amazing. Some ran and some walked some galloped and some skipped. But everyone stayed on their track. The children were much more successful with a path to follow. And it was a great whole-body experience and visual to see how the planets orbit around the sun.
Teacher Thaovy taught us many neat facts about Mercury this week. We learned that it can get up to 800 degrees in the day and down to about negative 300 degrees at night. Also that Mercury is made up of rock and iron and has many craters like the moon. Mercury doesn't have a moon like Earth does.
Our friends worked together to make Oreo pudding. After it was finished, we all got to drop a few chocolate chips that were asteroids that hit Mercury.
P using his muscles to mix, mix, mix.
L observing as G stirs the pudding.
Friends like to count to 10 to stir and then they pass. It came out delicious!!
We will be making a planet book and the first planet that we are drawing is Mercury.
Our friends added craters and wrote what Mercury was made of at the bottom.
S looking over to F's paper to give him positive feedback. Friends helping friends!
A making her model of Mercury. The children used foil to cover their plastic golf ball, to show the craters. Then everyone used brown and white to create the color of Mercury.
M concentrating on her planet.
In preschool we created our own constellations with with the links and connectors. Then each child took a turn describing their constellation.
By the end the children decided to put theirs together and make a castle constellation. It was so neat to see their teamwork. All were very proud of their work!
Friends have been working hard in PreK, and we have seen so much growth in our PreK group. It is amazing to watch their maturity and their growing ability to recognize letters and what sounds they make. They love to try and spell their friends' names and practice skills like cutting, coloring in the lines, and writing their own name and working from left to right, top to bottom. Our friends decided that G was a tricky letter to write.
A and S working on their letter Z. They really enjoyed making the zebra stripes and even making a silly face too.
Sensory bins are always a hit. H, Y and P exploring water balls.
E using glitter glue to make his letter G
One of G's favorite art materials is glitter glue! The glitter glue was a challenge for some of the children to squeeze. We are always working on strengthening our wrists and fingers.
Hugs,
Teacher Kristina
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