Neptune...

On Thursday during our circle time we reviewed our sight words for the month by spelling them out.  We looked for the matching letters on our peek-a-boo alphabet strip...

 On this day we learned about Neptune!  I asked the kids what colors they see on Neptune.  Some of the kids said "blue."  Some of the kids said, "light blue, and dark blue."  Some of the kids said they thought Neptune looked, "purple."  It's debatable, that's for sure...

 I placed all the gas planets in the center of our circle.  We held hands and sang...

"Ring around the planets,

Jupiter and Neptune,

Uranus, Saturn,

They all have rings!" 

When we sang the word "rings," we made a circle above our head with our arms and twirled around.

Ring around the planets...

...they all have gas!

When we sang the word "gas," we made a gassy sound!

(Sung to the tune of "Ring Around the Rosie.")

 The kids wanted to sing this song a few times.  

They laughed so hard when they got to make a gassy sound!

 We learned that Neptune has large swirling storms in its atmosphere.  Each child was given a green bouncy ball for their craft project.  We placed the balls in a tray and we practiced rolling them around...

 Next, we drew a large circle shaped Neptune on blue paper...

 We cut out our circle...

 Then we placed our circle in the tray.  We chose three colors to squirt on our paper planet...

 We rolled the balls over the paint.  We pretended we were making the planet storm!

 It was challenging for some of the kids to not shake the bucket up and down.  

They could only move it side to side or the balls would fall out.

 We glued our planets to black paper...

 Then we added 14 moon stickers around it.  Neptune has 14 moons!

 Our finished products!  They turned out awesome!

 I set out the planets around the room and asked the kids to pretend to travel through space.  I observed the kids and most of them wanted to jump from planet to planet in their correct order.  There were a few arguments when some of the kids moved the planets around.

 We completed a graphing activity with our "Would you rather...?" cards.  The kids used our star shapes to mark their spots.  It was fun to watch them.  They knew they needed to start the first star on the first space of each column.

   We discussed which were the most and least popular choices.  For this question I could see that most of the kids thought it would be too dangerous to fly around the Sun.  The one person who voted for the sun said, "It would just be awesome to see the sun."  I can't argue with that!

  We answered 6 questions...

 I asked the kids why they think Neptune looks blue.  They replied with, "Because it has a lot of blue stuff," "Because they painted it blue," and "Because it has a lot of water and ice."  I explained that one of the gases on Neptune (methane) absorbs red light from the Sun and reflects blue light back out.  

We made our own "Space Writing Bags!"  

I bought hair gel from the Dollar store (one blue and one clear).

 First we squirted the blue gel in a Ziploc baggie and sealed it up.  

We tried writing letters in it, but it was too hard to see our markings...

 So we added blue food coloring to make it a darker blue...

 We squished the bag to mix it all up...

 Next, we mixed blue and yellow food coloring in the clear gel and made a green space writing bag!

 The darker colors worked so much better!

 We placed them on our light table!  What fun!

 I showed the kids this visual of the difference between different space rocks...

I explained that Neptune has 6 rings, just like the other gas planets.  The rings are made of ice and rocks.  Sometimes, ice chunks break off and get drawn towards the Sun.  They are known as comets.

We made our own comet balls with a piece of crumpled up paper and crepe paper for the tail.

 We had fun throwing our comet balls and watching the tail fly behind it...

 We headed outside and threw our comet balls.  I set out a tape measure for the kids to measure how far they could throw their comet ball.

 This cutie threw hers the farthest the first time...

 This guy threw his the farthest the second time...

  There were a lot of numbers on this tape measure.  I showed the kids where to find the black arrows that marked the length in feet.

 Then we played with our Lakeshore Learning Comet balls.  I was hesitant to buy these balls, but I am so glad I did.  They exceeded my expectations!  The kids LOVE playing with these!

 We wanted to measure and see if throwing the ball by the ball end would make it go farther...

 ...than throwing the ball by the tail end.

 

 A few of the kids played catch...

 All of the kids loved swinging them around from the tail end!

  We did some more measuring in our math workbooks...

 Then we traced our foot on paper...

 ...and turned the outline of our foot into a rocket ship!

 We also completed a cut and paste mini letter R book in our literacy workbook.

 The kids are getting so good at their reading!

 This book was recommended by Mother Goose Time for us today.  It was a little big long for preschoolers.  We read only some of it.

 I chose this book for today.  It did a better job at holding the kids attention.