During our morning circle time routine I gave one volunteer the hands-on letter Z's. I asked him to find the matching peek-a-boo letter on our alphabet strip...
He opened the letter to reveal Z is for zipper!
We looked for items in the room that have zippers!
These two found a zipper on the animals that they brought today...
N found a zipper on her backpack!
After showing the kids the astronaut daily topic poster we sang...
"(Name) is an astronaut,
astronaut, astronaut.
(Name) is an astronaut,
who walks on the Moon."
(Sung to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb.")
I invited the child who I named in the song to walk around in the middle of the circle in slow motion...
Mother Goose Time gave us this photo of an astronaut in a spacesuit. Each part of the spacesuit was labeled. We discussed the importance of all the different parts. We also compared our clothes to the astronaut's suit.
I set out adult sized black boots, gloves, and a space helmet.
I invited the kids to try on the boots, gloves and helmet. The kids walked around the room and we discussed how difficult it was. We compared this feeling to what the astronauts might experience when they are wearing a spacesuit and walking with zero gravity.
We made a paper bag astronaut puppet with a real photo of us on the inside of the helmet!
I asked the kids what animal they would like to take into space. I explained that the first animal to orbit Earth was a dog from Russia named Laika! We sang our continent song and then labeled our world map with a sticker that said "Russia" on it.
I showed the kids the Russian flag. We looked at all the flags we have learned from this year. We compared and contrasted the Russian flag to the American flag.
I set out Styrofoam bowls, duct tape, and tinfoil for the kids to dress their own stuffed animal they brought from home today!
The kids ended up needing a lot of my help with this project, but they had SO MUCH FUN playing with their astronaut animal!
Elmo looks a little fearful in a spacesuit! Lol!
I took out our puppet stand, and the kids put on shows with their paper bag puppets and their stuffed animals...
We worked on the letter Z page in our journal. They practiced writing the letter Z and then drew an astronaut sleeping with the letter Z's coming off of him/her. The kids completed the sentence, "The astronaut is..." Some of the kids wrote "sleeping," and some wrote "snoring." Ha!
I set out a station of a spacesuit, a paper bag, and the hands-on letters we are learning this month.
The letters were placed in the bag and each child chose one letter at at a time without looking...
If they got the letter Z...
...then they zipped up the zipper on the spacesuit!
(If they did not get the letter Z, they named the letter and sound they did get and then tried again.)
We drew the same amount of patches on the spacesuit as the number by each astronaut in our math workbooks...
(If they did not get the letter Z, they named the letter and sound they did get and then tried again.)
We practiced reading a book from our literacy workbooks. We also underlined all the letter Z's.
On the last page of our book we drew a picture of a place we think "Zack" would zoom next...
We learned that astronauts took spiders to space and observed that they could spin webs even without gravity! We LOVED the song for today! It was called "Spiders in Space!" We walked like a spider while we listened to this song on our Mother Goose Blast Off to Space CD...
We were fortunate enough to have even found a spider in the house to look at in our magnifying bug jar (from our bug vacuum)! This kids giggled and screamed every time the spider walked around!
These were our books for today! A is for Astronaut is a great book! In the book the letter L was for Laika, the space dog! Thanks Mother Goose Time for another great book recommendation!
In the afternoon we worked on some gross motor and fine motor skills!
First I explained to the kids that the astronauts need to exercise for a minimum of 2 hours per day to stay healthy. This is because being in space in harder on the human body than being on Earth. Mother Goose gave us these exercise picture cards. We had a fun time exercising and reinforcing our number recognition and counting skills!
Doing "The Superhero" for 9 seconds...
Squatting for 10 seconds...
The kids favorite was the head stand for 5 seconds. I taught the kids how to do a head stand up against the wall. They got SO EXCITED!
Some of the kids faced the wall instead and walked their feet up.
They were pretty proud of themselves!
For our fine motor activity I gave the kids these wind-up astronauts to play with.
I bought them at Oriental Trading.
We had fun watching them walk across the table...
Did you know these little toys help build the muscles in your child's fingers?
All of this will help to improve dexterity, which will better their writing skills!
First I explained to the kids that the astronauts need to exercise for a minimum of 2 hours per day to stay healthy. This is because being in space in harder on the human body than being on Earth. Mother Goose gave us these exercise picture cards. We had a fun time exercising and reinforcing our number recognition and counting skills!
They were pretty proud of themselves!
I bought them at Oriental Trading.
All of this will help to improve dexterity, which will better their writing skills!
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