The Sun and Moon... Plus BIG New :) :) :)

Let's get to the BIG news first! I promised I had a really good reason for my lack of blogging...

Mr. Hubs and I are having a baby :) I just turned 15 weeks today, and we are so excited! We will find out if it's a boy or a girl over spring break! We could definitely use any prayers we can get, as we have had a bit of a rocky road in the past.

 

Okay, so I do have something school related to post! We started our space unit and the kids are having a blast! We learned all about the sun and the moon, made some anchor charts together, and then we had our kiddos do some informational writing about each. And OMG! They rocked their writing!

 

 

 

 

 

To make these awesome moons, each child needs a paper plate and a straw. You need to mix a little water, black paint, karo syrup and dish soap in a dish. Have the kids blow BIG bubbles with the straw, and push the plate on it. If you find that the bubbles aren't showing up too well, add some more black paint. You also may need to press the plate on top of the bubbles more than once. Here are photos of the process. {Just don't use a small, square dish, haha}.

 

And you can't learn all about the moon without doing Oreo Moon Phases!! We just did half of the phases to save our parents from having to buy a gazillion Oreos! Also, we normally have our kids cut and paste labels for the phases, but we ran really short on time that day... Whoops! Live and learn :)

 

 

I have no idea why that picture keeps loading sideways... Of course the kids thought this was the best day EVER! We tend to hear that when we do yummy activities :)

 

This week has been all about the planets! We got some awesome sets of books about the planets from our PTA and Scholastic that we have been reading, along with my All About the Planets {Nonfiction Reader and Journal}. The kids are really enjoying space, and I feel like we could spend FOREVER learning about it! But, we must move on next week :) Happy Hump Day, everyone! We are almost done for the week!!





Planets....and Toilet Paper!?

Our space unit was a big hit! We spent the past couple of days taking a look at the planets. We focused on the rock planets one day and the gas planets the next. We read lots of nonfiction books, looked at some cool pictures on the smarthboard, and used my All About the Planets! pack. The kids learned so much!!

 

 To end our space unit, we got a good look at how far each planet is from the sun in comparison to one another! We demonstrated this using.... TOILET PAPER! You may remember my post from last year. Anyway, we first had the kids estimate where they thought each planet should go...

 

{This picture was from last year-I didn't grab my phone in time to snap a pic!}

Then we gave them the distance of each planet from the sun. We told them that each square of toilet paper was equal to 10 million miles. We decided to work in a little ball park estimation-we see it regularly in our math series :) The kids had to tell us about how far each planet was from the sun. Great review!! Anyway, here are the measurements we used:

 

Mercury: 36 million miles {~40 million=4 squares}

Venus: 67 million miles {~70 million=7 squares}

Earth: 93 million miles {~90 million=9 squares}

Mars: 141 million {~141 million=14 squares}

Jupiter: 484 million miles {~480 million=48 squares}

Saturn: 886 million miles {~890 million=89 squares}

Uranus: 1.8 billion miles {~1,800 million=180 squares}

Neptune: 2.8 billion miles {~2,800 million=280 squares}

 

 

 

{My view from Neptune. All the kids are waving goodbye!}

 

We went through every planet and the kids were really excited and amazed! I think it really helped put everything into perspective :) HUGE shout out to Mrs. Kolar, our ELL teacher, who helped again this year!!

 

If you got this far,  I want to give my All About the Planets! pack to the first person to comment {since I have not given it to anyone yet!!}

 

I will post about our Valentine's Day happenings later on this week :) HAPPY WEEKEND!



Sun, Moon and Stars

First off, congrats to Steph for winning my Amber Brown is Not a Crayon Novel Study! Hope you enjoy it! :)

 

We started our space unit this past week and it is definitely a high interest unit! The kids are learning so much!! We had to squeeze it into a week and a half this year {last year we had almost 3 weeks!!} But we are making sure the kids are having the same fun and learning just as much as last year!

 

We started our unit by learning how we get night and day and the seasons. We read in our science books and did some demos of how the Earth rotates and then also orbits around the Sun. We also had Bill Nye demonstrate :) Then we made these cool little things to show how the Earth orbits around the Sun.

 

 

We then moved onto the Sun. We read several books about the Sun and showed lots of cool pictures! We made an anchor chart together to record some of our learning. {this is from last year-forgot to photograph this year's!}  They learned soooo many facts!

 

 

Then the kids made their own Sun Facts craftivity! They each got 6 rays and the wrote a fact on each ray.

 

 

Since the Sun is a star, we moved onto stars and constellations. Again, we did a lot of reading and we got to show some really cool stars, nebulas and contellations on the smart board! Then we had the kids make themselves as a constellation and write 4 facts they learned.

 

Next, we had Moon Day! This was a big hit :) We read lots about the moon {and Bill Nye helped us again... HA}. Then we made an anchor chart to record some of our learning {again, this is last year's photo}.

 

Then we had the kids make these really cool moons! You can see how to make these moons {HERE}. And they had to write at least 4 facts to go with their illustration!

 

And our most anticipated activity was our Oreo Moon Phases! We have amazing parents who sent all the supplies we needed to make this happen! We used icing {err, "moon glue"} instead to attach everything {even the strips of paper!} So there was no cutting or gluing involved! It sure helped to have our document cam that day :)

The icing was also good because they could eat their projects after the got home and taught a family member :)

This coming week we are going to learn all about the planets. We will read lots of nonfiction books and use my All About the Planets pack! We will also throw in some Valentine's fun all day Thursday! Then Friday is a professional day! Hope everyone has a great Sunday and a great school week :)



Stars & Planets

We have finally finished up our space unit. It lasted 3 weeks, and I am not going to lie... I am all spaced out!!! I do not have all that much to post, but here are just a couple of photos I snapped...

We spent a couple of days learning about stars and constellations, and the kids LOVED it! We read a several books and looked up photos of stars and nebulas online. So cool! After we learned about stars, the kids got to make themselves as a constellation! They wrote four facts about stars, too (one on each star).

{I do not know why this one won't rotate for me. Sorry!!}

When learning about the planets, we focused first on the rock planets, then on the gas giants. We did a LOT of reading, but the kids loved it. They have been soooo into learning about the planets, and I love it! After we learned about each planet, I recorded our facts on some planet anchor charts (sorry, no photo!) Then at the end of the week, the kids made a flip book; one page per planet. They colored a picture of each planet and wrote 2-3 interesting facts about each.

Amy and I did this Pinterest inspired activity on Friday. This was seriously an AWESOME activity!! First, we had our kiddos estimate where they thought the planets would be in comparison to the Sun and each other...

Then we reviewed the real distance for each planet and whipped out the toilet paper!!! This activity was GREAT for ballpark estimates! Here are the measurements I found on google that we used. Each square of toilet paper is equal to 9 or 10 million miles.

Mercury: 36 million miles away, 4 squares.

Venus: 67 million miles away, 7 squares.

Earth: 93 million miles away, 10 squares.

Mars: 141 million miles, 15 squares.

Jupiter: 484 million miles away, 52 squares.

Saturn: 886 million miles away, 95 squares.

Uranus: 1.8 billion miles away, 192 squares.

Neptune: 2.8 billion miles away, 301 squares.

{That's the view from Uranus... Neptune was even further back a good 25 feet!!!}

The kids were AMAZED and so excited!! I think it really put it into perspective for them just how far the planets are from the Sun and from each other. I loved, loved, LOVED this activity! I would recommend doing it with another teacher, and possibly having one or two extra adults to help (we were lucky our ELL teacher just happened to be there, and she helped out a lot!) It took about 30 minutes, but could have gone longer, easily!!

Can't wait to see what everyone is doing for Valentine's day and Presidents day!!! Happy weekend :)

The Sun & Moon

First of all, TGIF!!!!

This week we started our space unit, and we focused on the Sun and Moon. We have read several nonfiction books about each (don't you LOVE Gail Gibbons??!) And I am not going to lie.. I showed two videos this week... *GASP* But they were GREAT! I remember Bill Nye when I was in school, and he still rocks! He had a video on the Sun and one about the Moon.  We recorded all the fun new facts we learned on our Sun and Moon anchor charts.

To do our Sun facts, I first had the kids finger paint the center of the sun. Seriously took 10 minutes for them all to do it, and the look really cool! They needed to dry most of the morning, so we did our writing that afternoon. I had them write five or six facts on the sun rays that they folded accordion style. Super cute and easy!

We also wrote our Moon facts today. We made these AWESOME moons. Each child needs a paper plate and a straw. You need to mix a little water, black paint, karo syrup and hand soap in a dish. Have the kids blow BIG bubbles with the straw, and push the plate on it. See the pics below....

It was VERY helpful to have our 2nd grade assistant pulling kids to do this :) It only took 10-15 minutes to get everyone done, and they dry super quick.

Once they are cut out, the moons look SO. COOL!

We also made this Pinterest inspired activity today! I decided to just do 5 oreos, because the one on Pinterest does waning and waxing phases, which look the same but are just opposite :) The kids flipped for this activity. Food is just SO. EXCITING.

Next week we will only get to stars and constellations because Tuesday is our 100th day celebration and we have a professional day Friday (woohoo!)

Happy weekend, friends!