Out of This World Fun

WOW!  I've said it before and I'll say it again (and again!), I love this unit!  Each and every day I am blown away by what my class can do!  At the beginning of our unit on the Solar System, I assign each child a planet name.  As we go through our week, I call them by their planet name and tell them something special about themselves.  By the end of the week the children not only can tell me about THEIR planet, but also about all the others.  WOW!  Make it fun and they WILL learn!

We started our unit on the solar system by talking about the center of our universe, the sun.  One of our favorite activities is "squishy" painting.  First, I cut circles out of poster board (you can use cereal boxes too).  Each child squirts on the different paints.  We used red, orange, yellow, gold and bronze.  Next comes the fun part . . . we cover the paint filled circle with clear plastic wrap (WARNING:  If you use CHEAP plastic wrap you will want to use two pieces, trust me!) and then we SQUISH!  The results are beautiful.  I have a large piece of black construction paper with a blob of glue waiting and I carefully place the very wet "sun" onto it.  This is where I end up getting messy but the children are still clean.  The children add the sun rays and the results are truly amazing!

 

We had to have a snack that was "out of this world" so we headed to the kitchen to whip up some fun solar system cookies. 

It was easy, but fun!  We mixed up some yellow icing and added it to a small cookie to make our sun.  Then we added our nine planets (YES, I said nine!  We decided not to leave the dwarf planet, Pluto out of the fun!).  Yummy and fun!

I really love this next art project!  I call it our name rockets.  Each child picks out colorful squares and writes one letter of their name in each square.  This is a wonderful activity to practice our writing and math skills.  I love the end result, especially the "fire" and little stars!

During our Winter Week, I took some pictures of the students to make our special snow people.  I just had two copies printed off so we could all become astronauts!

 

Sorry, for the big ugly square, but I have to protect the identity of my sweet students.  The moon was made with sand paper rubbings.  I love that my sweet little "S" had to make her flag correctly!

Since our letter this week was "J" we decided that we needed to fly to Jupiter!  And fly we did.  We spent all day Wednesday talking about our largest planet and making a rocket ship out of different shapes to take us there.

I especially love this Jupiter. 

Can you see the big red spot?

 

My surprise for the week came in the form of sweet "S" yelling from across the room.  I hurdled two children and chair to see that she had written her name with the magnetic letters!

 



Her planet name of course!

 

No fun Solar System Week would be complete without moon rocks.  On Thursday we turned "regular, old earth rocks" in fabulous moon rocks.

 

All you need are some good sized rocks, gray paint and scrap pieces of black tissue paper.  Instant moon rocks!  Be prepared, these take several days to dry.

 

Ahhhhhh . . . Friday is always the most fun day of our week and I did not want to disappoint anyone.  We started by mixing flour and white paint. 

You can see everyone got to measure and mix up their own!

 

Next, we added just a squirt of black paint and kept mixing!

 

Besides having flour everywhere, it wasn't too messy.  But then . . . . . 

 

we dumped our mixture onto a large circle cut from cereal boxes and moved it all around.  SUPER messy but SUPER fun!  While the children were washing their hands (PLEASE be careful of your sink if and when you do this.  This can clog up a sink.), I glued their moon down to a piece of black construction paper.  Then the children added stars made from silver and gold glitter paint.

 

Here is a closer view of our moon.

 

 

I was so amazed with my class this week and wanted to end with something really special.  The first thing we did was head to kitchen to make some "moon sand".  My recipe is very simple, sand and cornstarch.  I know some of you may want to know the exact ratio but sorry, I just dump it in.  The children didn't care, it was fun.

A little note about the sand.  When I bought the sand, it was wet.  No problem I thought, it will dry.  But, here in Alabama we have had multiple days below the freezing mark.  So if you buy wet sand PLEASE don't leave it in your car for several days . . . it will freeze!  Oh well, good thing we have microwaves!!!

 

Hang on, I'm not done.  We talked all week about gravity and to help the children understand it a little better, we ate a little treat just like the astronauts do . . .

applesauce from a bag with a straw!

FUN, FUN, FUN!!!!!

 

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you check on us again because next week we will be talking about DINOSAURS!!!!!



















Super Solar System Fun!

Children are amazing and talented creations and given the chance anything can happen.  Each year I become more and more impressed with my classroom when we discuss the Solar System.  This year is NO exception.  To be honest, I came into this week a little less prepared than usual.  We were suppose to do a new unit on dinosaurs, but we changed at the last minute because our older classes had it planned (oops on my part!) and our school resources would have been over extended.  No problem, I love the unit on the Solar System so we blasted off to the moon!  Because of Martin Luther King Day, we were out of school on Monday, and our week started off on Tuesday talking about the sun!

This is one of those art projects that is super simple BUT enables the child to use so many different skills.  We started with a circle (cut by the teacher from poster board), the children put big blobs (that is their word) of paint onto the circle.  We used yellow, red and some very SHINY, FUN gold!  I cover the circle with plastic wrap and then . . . .

SQUISHY TIME!!

 



FUN, FUN, FUN!  This is a great sensory and fine motor activity rolled in to one!  Next, we carefully removed the plastic wrap and laid the (very) wet circle onto a black sheet of construction paper (covered in glue) AND

the children added the sun rays!  We tried to practice our "pencil skills" while we were painting our sun rays by letting the children use a small paintbrush.  Some of the rays were long and other were short, but it didn't matter, they were all wonderful!

During our circle time this week each child was assigned something from our solar system.  All week long the child was referred to by his/her planet name, moon, asteroid or comet.  Each day we added a new fact about the planets.  My class was like a bucket of sponges, I literally could not tell them enough information!  They wanted more and more!!!  By the end of the week no one had names anymore, just solar system references.

We also worked on our writing skills this week and made a rocket. 

I found this on PINTEREST ( My Solar System PINTEREST board ) last year and made a few changes.  Each child counts the number of letters in their name and then picks out that number of squares.  Next, the child writes the letters of his/her name on the blocks and glues them to a piece of black construction paper (really long names may require more than one sheet of paper).  The bottom of the rocket reads, "My name is _________ rocket blocks long." The children count the blocks and write in the number.  This is such a special piece that we did not show our parents, we are keeping it for our Spring Art Show so shhhhhh. . . keep our secret!

We also talked about the moon this week.  I am very fortunate to have some amazing posters from my husband's uncle.  He worked for NASA in Huntsville, Alabama in the early years of the Apollo projects.  My class really enjoyed looking at them, especially the ones of the astronauts and the moon's surface.  We also spent a great deal of our day counting backwards and yelling "BLAST OFF!".  It was a fun way to line up or change activities.  Our art project on this day was to fly to the moon and we did!

The children made the moon by painting a black circle with silver paint.  Next, they sprinkled sand on top of the wet paint - INSTANT MOON! 

 

The "fire" shooting out of our rocket is made by letting the children mix red and yellow paint right on the paper. 

 

(NOTE: The white circle is really a photo of the child's face. I removed it for safety reasons.)

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was all about the moon!  We started out with plain old rocks (THANKS TIFFANY AND CHAD!)

Added some shiny silver paint mixed with silver glitter paint, glue and some tissue paper.

The results were marvelous!!!!

This rock is done without the tissue paper.

 

This one has tissue paper and lots of paint.

It was still very wet when we left on Friday!

 

Our science project this week was really run AND messy.  We mixed 1 part sand and 1 part corn starch together for . . . .

 

MOON SAND!

It was a lot of fun PLUS everyone got to take home a bag!

 

WOW, we sure packed a lot into four short days didn't we????  Next week is our unit on dinosaurs so I better head off and start studying!  I'm not a big expert on dinosaurs and I want to be ready for those "tough" questions.  THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!

Let's Fly to the Moon (or Jupiter?)!

I know I say it all the time but . . . "I LOVE THIS UNIT"!  This is truly one of my favorites.  It still amazes me to see how much my little sponges can absorb.  The sky was the limit (literally) this week as we discussed our solar system.  We started out the week with a big surprise - a rocket ship in our classroom!

Our square snowman got a weekend makeover!  Everyone loved pretending where the next rocket would go.  Since we quickly learned that the sun is the center of our universe, we started off our week by doing a wonderful art project of the sun!  This is one of my personal favorites because even though everyone uses exactly the same material, the final results are all different.  We started with a BIG round circle and added our paint.  Next, we covered it with clear plastic wrap -

Here comes the fun part . . . next we squish it!

Everyone of course has their own technique.  Some are gentle while others literally beat the daylights out of it.  Either way, the results are amazing!  We quickly plopped the wet sun onto a LARGE piece of black construction paper and added the sun rays.  OH MY!

At this point I realized these were something special!

One of my favorite things to do during "Solar System" week is to assign each child a planet name.  This year I have 10 children in my classroom, so everyone got a planet name and we even had earth's moon!  The entire week we called everyone by their planet name.  I added new facts each day and by the end of the week my entire class could not only locate their planet on the diagram, but most could locate and name the entire solar system!

Since the big rocket was staring at us all week, we decided to "fly to the moon!".  I found this amazing astronaut over at Crayola and I knew he/she would be perfect.  I tweaked him just a little by cutting him out, adding details to the flag and removing his face (we will add ours later!).  Then we started painting!

I was amazed at how insistent my class was about painting the American flag "the right way".  Everyone wanted the little square to be blue and it had to have stripes on it!  Needless to say, I was proud!  I told everyone that they could do any planet they wanted.  I guess they really WERE listening in circle time because each and everyone of them knew that men had already been to the moon, so off the moon we went.  We made our moon by doing a good old fashion sand paper rubbing.

Finally, it was time to put it all together.  We added our rocket ship (with hand print flames), some stars and WOW!

I hope the parents loved it as much as I did!

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was SO EXCITING!  First, we are lucky enough to have an amazing Dad who is a landscaper.  I put out an S.O.S. for some rocks and he came through BIG time.  They were perfect for our moon rocks!  Everyone used silver paint to stick on some black and white tissue paper.  

After they dried we added a little silver glitter glue and . . . . 

instant moon rocks!  SWEET!

To me the most exciting part of the week happened when we headed to the kitchen on Friday.  First we made a rocket cookie for our snack.

Next, we made our very own "moon sand"!  The recipe is very simple -

                 4 cups of sand

                 2 cups of corn starch

                 1 cup of water

                 Mix together and have fun!  

AND BOY DID WE HAVE FUN!

Before we knew it we had been in our kitchen area for over an hour!  We even sent everyone home with their very own bag of "moon sand".  

Our "Solar System" week was only four days because of the "Martin Luther King" holiday on Monday.  We voted and decided that we needed ONE MORE DAY, so on Monday of the following week we savored the last sweet day of our solar system with the most amazing project, a name rocket.  First everyone wrote the letters of their names on little squares of paper.  Next, we lined them up in the shape of a rocket, added some stars and more flames AND  . . . . . .

another WOW project!  And, before you ask, YES! the children wrote their names BY THEMSELVES!   I AM SO PROUD!

It was great week.  I hope you visit us again.  Next week we will be talking about the circus!

I'm sharing this at - 

The Solar System

To be honest, I don't think I will ever get over Pluto not being a planet, non-the-less, I still love talking with my class about the Solar System. I'll have to admit that I was a little worried this year's discussions because my class is younger than in the pasts. Most of my students are still 3 and won't turn 4 until the late spring or summer. Setting my worries aside I jumped right in. Good thing too because our battle cry this week was "WE LOVE THE SOLAR SYSTEM!" My partner in crime, a.k.a. Mrs. Christi, came up with something a little different this year. "Let's EACH make a giant solar system", she said! My response, "uh, okay?" Turned out to be a great idea, very difficult, but very fun! Each day we discussed and made two planets. Each planet was made with a different craft method. We did everything, First we made a giant sun with our famous "squishy painting). Next, we rubbed Mercury over some sandpaper. Venus and Jupiter were made with marble painting, while Mars was painted and sprinkled with grits. Uranus and Neptune were water colored, and the Earth and Venus were finger painted. Everyone loved seeing the "real" pictures (special thanks to my son, who let me use all his old childhood NASA photos) of the planets. Each child was also assigned a planet to be his/her. At the end of the week we were all calling each other by our planet names - SUPER fun! On Friday we decided that it was time to put our creations all together. WOW, super huge project, too big for our little classroom so we headed to the big music room.

After all the planets were glued on we added some fun colors stars and sang our song about the solar system.
Of course no "Fabulous Fun Friday" (yes, that is what we call it!) would be complete without a fabulously fun trip to the kitchen for a super special snack. This week we ate a rocket ship! Graham crackers, Fruit Loops and M&M's make a super solar snack!

Don't you just love the planet M&M's?!?!? The Fruit Loop windows somehow were eaten before the photo was taken :) !

Oh, and just for the record, we vote on things in our classroom and after much discussion we decided . . . PLUTO should still be considered a planet! Once again, my class surprised me with their wonderful enthusiasm for learning.
My motto - make it fun and they will learn!