Astronomer!

When the kids arrived today they saw our new planetarium!  I am so thankful my husband works with a packaging company and can get a box any time we need one!  He did a great job making this awesome planetarium for the kids!

Twinkling Christmas light were poked through the top...

I bought these planets and taped them to the top...

Here is what it looks like inside!

 Here is what it looks like with my camera flash on.  I also taped up the constellation pictures and daily topic posters that Mother Goose Time provided...

Happy faces!

 Even the biggest kid loved it!

 We learned that astronomers study the night sky.  They often use telescopes to help them see what's in space.  Before starting circle time we painted cardboard tubes with pant dobbers.  I wanted these to be dry in time for us to play with them and imagine they are telescopes...

The kids thought an astronomer was the same thing as an astronaut.  So I did my best to explain the difference.  I asked the kids what they would like to learn about space.  They replied with "astronauts," "planets," "stars," and "space aliens."

Mother Goose gave us yellow and blue foam stars this month.

I sprinkled the stars all over the classroom floor.  The kids took turns with our yellow color bird and pretended to feed all the yellow stars to the yellow bird...

Next, I lined up the planets and sun that Mother Goose Time provided.  We sang the song, "Do you know the astronomer? Astronomer, astronomer?  Do you know the astronomer? He's/She's looking at the..."  (Sung to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?")  We took turns pointing to one of the planets as we sang this song for each person.

 Next, the kids closed their eyes...

 

while I cut apart the star stickers provided through Mother Goose Time and hid them throughout the room. 

Our cardboard telescopes were dry by this time so we used them to search for our hidden star stickers...

When we found our stickers we applied them to our telescope.  This was great for fine motor...

I explained that long ago, before maps, travelers used stars as guides and charts.  The North Star (Polaris) is a star that never moves. We were given our own set of constellation cards...

We cut our cards apart...

Then we poked the stars in the constellation with a small skewer stick...

We held our card up to the light and looked at it through our telescope...

Next we placed our foam stars on new shape design mats to complete the constellations...

We tried our best to recreate the designs from each mat on the blank one...

Then we made our own pictures with the stars.  N made a "snowman," and J made a "happy face!"

I wanted to show the kids what a planetarium really looks like.  So I showed them images on my computer...

We used our telescopes in our planetarium...

What would you like to look for in the night sky?  We scratched our space paper that we made the day before.  I was successful with my own, but the kid's did not turn out as well.  They didn't color their paper as bright as they probably should (understandably though).

Luckily I had purchased back up scartch art paper...

Wow! The kids were amazed when they saw how the paper really works!

We matched beginning sounds in our workbooks today...

We colored all of our stars in our math workbooks...

This was our book for the day!  It was awesome!  It was simple enough for the kids to understand, and it explained where the name "Big Dipper" derived from....

In the afternoon I set out "Astronomer tools," or tools that are used for looking at things close up...

 This is our talking microscope...

 We liked looking at the lines in our hands...

 Yes, these things really work!  Ha!

When our school-agers got home from school they worked on their scratch art.  Theirs worked better than the younger kids because they colored brighter with their crayons...

 This melts my heart!!!!  To all our Grandmas and Grandpas reading!  You have no idea how much these kids talk about you all!  They really do love and appreciate all that you do for them!!!!