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 :)