Blast Off!

Space is one of my favorite weeks of preschool!  There are so many fun and magical things we can do in class to spark the children's minds!  Here are just  a few of the amazing things we were able to teach about this week!

One vocabulary word we learned this week was crater; holes made on surfaces like the moon due to objects colliding with them.  We jumped from crater to crater in either tape circles or hula hoops placed on the floor to give the children a tactile idea of what typical craters are in the shape of; circles.  

Then, we threw meteors or moon rocks into some craters as well for some large motor skill hand eye coordination time.  

For math time, we even played a dice game in the morning to see which preschooler would fill in all their craters the fastest based on their roll.

We also did a little science experiment making craters on our own with pie tins filled with flour making the shape of the moon.  The children were given small pebbles to drop into the tin the carefully pick up to reveal craters of various sizes.

The morning preschoolers also practiced building rockets out of their names again to look for improvement from the last time we did this activity.   Some of the children were so excited about rockets this week they built their own out of blocks and even a few table chairs from the preschool tables. 

We painted rockets as well this week and even built some out of various shapes for an extra math activity.  Each day we spent  little time learning about rockets and space shuttles from building them to talking about where they go and what they see.  We even pretended to take a few flights to space!

Speaking of space, the children learned words like constellation as well and built many out of toothpicks and marshmallows, chalk and star stickers.  The children now know when you connect the dots of the stars, they can build pictures which is what we call constellations.

We also used a variety of apps on the iPads to find constellation placements in space as we moved them around the room and watched the constellations appear.

In case you were wondering why we use stickers so much in school, it is an excellent way to incorporate fine motor skills!  Pulling stickers off of the page to place them onto paper uses the pincher grasp which supports better writing.  So head out to the dollar store and pic up some stickers and let them design away at home!

Constellations weren't the only things we practiced making this week, we also made planets!  We realized that Earth is the easiest to find in the row of local planets because of the blue water and white clouds.  It's amazing what we learned from the children during our circle time discussions each day!

Ok, back to rockets!  So we also set some off this week using film canisters and alkaseltzer tablets outside!  They shot the highest we have seen and you can check it out on our instagram account where we have been posting a lot of fun videos this week!


We did a classroom blast off in the morning and afternoon to fly into space and go on some adventures.  Both morning and afternoon built constellations and galaxies out of hole punched paper.  If your child still has the paper he/she punched, then all you need to do is turn out the lights at home and shine a flashlight (maybe from your phone) under the paper and view the "stars" on your ceiling!  It's magical!

The other bit of magic we saw happen this week was how excited our own teachers were to build space helmets out of foil with the preschoolers to head up into space and view all the beauty out there.
The children were so excited about their helmets the teachers all asked to make some too and together we blasted off in our rockets at the circle rug and took a trip flying through space talking about what we saw on our journey!  

The afternoon children blasted off into space and created galaxies in bags to bring home.  They chose how much glue to add, what color and how much paint to include then sealed the bags and rubbed them together to find the sparkles of stars included in the paint.

On our journey into space in the afternoon, we build aliens out of play-dough, pipe cleaners and googly eyes. It was so funny hearing the giggles as each child worked to make the silliest alien they could imagine!

The morning took a quick trip to our gymnastics room on Friday as we practiced jumping on the moon like astronauts!  Then, when we got back to our classroom we tried jumping in our room and realized how much easier it is to bounce in space!

What's Coming Up?

Though space week is one of my favorites, we will be focusing on Earth Week by talking about Earth and the world in which we live.

We have 6 weeks of preschool left for the year so don't forget to mark your calendars for May 27th (Graduation Day).  More details will come the first week of May.

The Palatine High School Variety Show will be this weekend as well.  It is always amazing and filled with entertainment your family might enjoy!  Check out the Palatine High School webpage for more details!