Out of this world!

We had a lot of fun this week exploring space.  We talked about how there are 8 planets in our solar system, and briefly told about each one.  We talked about how BIG the sun is and we talked about other stars too.  We even learned a fun song called "The Solar System in Motion" that I found on the internet from http://www.lilteacher.com/. Here are the words:
(To the tune of The Farmer in the Dell)

The Earth turns around,
The Earth turns around.
Once a day, every day,
The Earth turns around.

The moon goes round the Earth,
The moon goes round the Earth.
Once a month, every month,
The moon goes round the Earth.

The Earth goes round the sun,
The Earth goes round the sun.
Once a year, every year,
The earth goes round the sun.

We talked about how constellations are groups of stars in the sky that help us map out the sky.  We made our own constellations with the number 13 (our number of the week) and with our lite bright center.

For a fine motor activity, we "reached for the stars".  I filled the sand table with different sizes of pom-poms and the kids used chopsticks to pick them up and put them into another container.  They loved star catching.

We also used the sand table for a sensory activity.  We filled it with sand, and then used different sized and weighted balls to drop into the table like a meteoroid and then observed the different craters that they left.

Check out those craters!

We also had a center with stencils where the kids could create their own patterns and then trace and color them.

We made space necklaces out of glow-in-the-dark beads and then traveled to space (a dark room) to see them glow.

We also had fun making our own moon art project, moon rocks, puzzles, and launching our own rockets!