Look to the Stars

Today we explored stars and the shapes they make in the night sky. 

We had an integrated constellation snack today.  

We made shapes with star marshmallows and pretzel sticks.

Then we had our friends guess what shapes we had made.

Next, we welcomed Mrs. Stacie with the NC Museum of Natural Sciences from Raleigh.  

 She led us in an exercise designed to help our young learners understand how the Earth moves around the sun.  

We got to "see" how Earth spins once a day, making day and night, and how it spins around 365 times in a year to make our 4 seasons.  

We encountered 4 animals that represented 4 constellations.  Here is the vampire crab.

We met a brown water snake to represent Hydra.

Look at this sweet bearded dragon!

Finally, we got to pet Thumper.  

We then traced pictures of the animals we met.

And applied stars to our drawings to demonstrate how the dots are connected in a constellation.

We ended our day with a little yoga of the constellations. 

Here we have turtle.

These guys are FLEXIBLE and absolutely loved our stretches.

We did tried warrior to remind us of Orion.  

What a fun way to stretch our bodies, minds, and build balance. 

We had a terrific week together exploring space.   I can't wait to see you all in July!

Me and My Shadow

Off to the sun, or as close to it as we could get without melting!  

Today we boarded our rocket ship to explore the sun.  

We began our day by reading Moonbear's Shadow.  A silly little book about a bear who tries his best to get away from his shadow.  He nails it down, buries it, and hides from it to no avail.  Finally, noon comes and his shadow is gone- only to return later in the afternoon.  

During our stations, we made space inspired sensory bottles.

We put in beads to remind us of planets, stones to remind us of the moon, and stars to remind us of, well stars.  

We also used forks to paint sunshines.  We mixed yellow and red paint to make a new color.

Finally, we headed outside to explore light by doing a little shadow watching.  

We traced each child's shadow at 10:00.

Then it was time for a solar snack.

Today we prepped the ingredients ourselves.

We leaned how to use a knife safely, we learned how to use a trash bowl for the extra parts of the fruit, and we listened and followed a recipe.

The end product was delicious,  

and fun!

At 11:45 we headed back out to check on our shadows.  Would they still be there?  

Would they look the same or different.  

We found our shadows, but they were different.  

What a neat way to demonstrate the moving earth to our little ones.

Mission: Moon!

Today we added an American Flag to our galaxy-doh, which for today was moon rock.  

Playing with a flag would normally be off limits, but for this project, we made an exception.  It is difficult to re-tell what happened on the moon without a flag to work with!

We started our morning off with a BANG!

Shortly after our blast-off for the moon, we read Hey Diddle Diddle.  This was the perfect story to keep us busy while we traveled to outer space.   

In our story we met many animal friends and learned how they played their instruments.  We pretend to play along with each animal, then we played our own instruments.  Since it was opposite day, when Mrs. Georgia said, "Play quietly", we played loudly.  When she said, "Play loudly", we played softly.  

Once we arrived on the moon, we got started with our space stations.

Today, opposite day, we drew pictures of the day and night sky.  We discussed what we do during the day, and what activities are specific to night.  

We used a white crayon to place stars in the night sky.  When we painted over them with blue watercolor, they shone through beautifully.  

We made a set of finger puppets to re-tell the story of Hey Diddle, Diddle.  

 

We placed craters on our moons.  

We used this activity to support our learners as they develop the ability to cut curved lines and manage the flow of glue.  

 And we dressed up like astronauts.  

3-2-1 Blast-off!

Summer camp is the best!  We get to do ALL of my ideas without worrying about schedule.

This morning we gathered for rocket launch at 0900 hours.  

Before blasting off we did a little research with some galaxy-doh.

We built pattern block rockets...

and bristle block rockets.  These are blasting off!

After we got dressed in our space suits and boarded the shuttle, it was time for a countdown.  We read a story about astronauts and discovered what they use many of their tools for.

During our space stations we built rocket names.

Made 3-d planets,

and straw rockets. 

Finally, it was time for the astronauts to eat.  We talked a lot about what it must be like to eat in space.  We wondered aloud what would happen when you poured milk without gravity.  We though about what astronauts do with their trash.  We are thinking that they reuse things quite a bit.    

We know that the astronauts can't go to the grocery store in space, so they have to take dried foods and other shelf stable items with them to eat.  

 Today we ate like astronauts.  We made pudding in a bag.  

Each child added milk to their bag of powdered pudding and mixed away until it was nice and ready.  Our pudding turned out to be delicious.  We reused our milk cups to pour our pudding in.  Way to recycle!

During free choice centers we read stories in the rocket ship, built  aliens, and explored moon sand.  

Stay tuned for a few more from today...