Spray Paint Galaxies

 Our class loves spray bottles! We often fill them with water and take them into the playground. For this activity, I filled the bottles with watered-down white tempera paint. Then the children sprayed it onto black construction paper to make stars. 

 Of course the paint got everywhere! But we were expecting that and had lots of paper towels on hand. 

 Next, each child colored a rocket ship to add to their space scene. 

 Some of the children sprayed so much paint that it didn't look much like stars; but once the pictures dried they still looked like very cool space scenes.  

Rocket Ship Names

 The kids in our class have been very interested in their names and the names of their classmates. For this reason I wanted an activity that reinforced name recognition. I found this fun project at www.prekinders.com. It's great because it incorporates the children's names into our current theme, space travel. 

Before starting the activity, I cut several sheets of green construction paper into one inch squares. I also cut triangles out of blue construction paper to use as the pointy tops of the rockets. When the children came to the table, I wrote the letters of their names on the paper squares and showed them how to glue the squares onto white paper to make a rocket ship. 

After glueing the pieces together, the children used red and orange markers to make "fire" coming out of the bottoms of their rockets.

 Now we are all ready to blast off!

Solar Systems

 Today we talked about our solar system and the planets that it consists of. This video told us the names and sizes of the planets that orbit around our sun. After watching the video, we made our own solar systems. 

To begin, I cut contact paper into rectangles and peeled off the paper. I put each piece of contact paper on the table with the sticky side up and secured it with tape. 

 Since the sun is the center of the solar system, we put a bright yellow sun (that I had cut from construction paper) into our solar systems first. 

 Next we added planets that I had cut from different colored paper earlier in the day. I let the children decide the number of planets they wanted to add. 

 

After the planets were in place, the children shook sparkles all over their contact paper to represent the stars in the distance.  

 We put a piece of black paper over the back of the contact paper to finish. 

 Later I put blue painter's tape around the edges to make a frame. 

When we were all done making these, we had fun counting the number of planets in each solar system. 

Sparkly Stars

 Now that we have made rocket ships, we need stars for them to fly around. I cut stars out of blue and yellow construction paper and set them out on the table along with bowls of glue and the leftover sparkles from Christmas time. 

First, the children covered their stars with glue...

... lots of glue! (It took days to get it all off of the table.)

Next they added the sparkles.

When the stars were dry, we hung Christmas lights on the top of our castle to represent twinkling stars and used fishing line to hang our paper stars from the lights.  

Emergent Curriculum in Progress: Building Rocket Ships

 Last week we had a great example of how emergent curriculum works. One morning, while I observed some of the children building in the block area, one of the boys said, "Miss Bridget, look. I made a rocket ship!"

 I asked him where his rocket ship was going and he told me it was going to space. As we talked about the rocket, I explained how there is a countdown before a rocket blasts off. We counted down from ten while several children, who had also built rockets, blasted their blocks into space. After a few minutes of this, I pulled out the iPad and found this video of a real rocket launch.  Of course all of the children gathered around as soon as they realized that the iPad was out. They loved the launch, so we watched it several times. 

Later, at circle time, I asked the children some questions about space ships and space travel in order to get an idea of what they already knew and what we could learn. I asked where the rocket went, who was in it, and what is in space.

The children answered that the rocket goes to space and has astronauts in it. They also knew that stars, planets, and the moon are in space. But when I asked what the astronauts would do in space, they were stumped. Several children suggested that the astronauts would visit relatives. One little boy said, "They will come here, to our school!" Of course everyone liked that idea until I pointed out that our school was not in space. I pulled up some pictures of astronauts on the moon and we talked a little bit about what they were doing up there. 

Now the whole class is very interested in anything having to do with space. I scratched the craft I had been planning to do that day and we made rockets out of paper towel rolls instead. For the rockets, I cut the paper towel rolls in half and gave one half to each child. Then I set out paint and brushes and let them paint their rockets however they liked. 

Once they were dry, I cut three triangles out of construction paper for each rocket. I cut a slit in each triangle...

and three slits around the bottom of each rocket.  

 Then I fitted the triangles into the slits on the rocket. 

The children stuffed red and yellow tissue paper "fire" into the bottoms of their rockets and they were ready for blast off!

 I am excited to see where this exploration of space and space travel will take us over the next couple of weeks.