The Moon!

We started our morning playing with a few fun space theme toys!  K borrowed us the Smithsonian planetarium light.  It is AWESOME!  The images projected on the ceiling are super clear!  We are so thankful they are borrowing this to us!  I also bought the star disco light for fun!  It is revolving...

 ...which makes for an FUN dance party experience!  We love Mother Goose Time's music CD's!!!

I also filled our sensory table with black beans and new toys!  All space related of course!

After doing calendar the kids took turns tracing our hands-on number 7 and counting to 7 on the number line...

We sang "We're going to the Moon..."  (Sung to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell.")

We're Going to the Moon.

We're going to the Moon.

Blast Off, away we go. We're going to the Moon.

(We held hands and moved clockwise.)

We're landing on the Moon.  

We're landing on the Moon.

Whoa, let's take it slow.

We're landing on the Moon.

(We let go of hands and moved in slow motion.)

We're going back to Earth.

We're going back to Earth.

Blast off, away we go.

We're going back to Earth.

(We held hands and circled counterclockwise.)

What would you bring back from the Moon?  

The kids replied with "Alien food," "Alien toys," "Alien Legos," and "AN ALIEN!"

We learned that 12 astronauts have walked on the Moon and collected many rocks and soil samples.

We made our own moon rocks!!!  The kids mixed some salt and flour dough that Mother Goose provided with a very small amount of water....

 They stirred their mixture with a spoon before forming it together with their hands...

 Once their dough was made, they played with it for a while before forming the shape they wanted for their moon rock...

 Our friendship word for the month is "patient."  

Check out these patient kids waiting their turn in line!

 Whoops!  A little too much water here....

 It was an easy fix!  We just needed to add more of the dry mixture...

 A few of the kids pretended to play "crocodiles and snakes!"

 I placed their creations on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  I wrote the first letter of their names next to each of their dough pieces.  Then I baked them for 2 hours at 250 degrees!  They came out hard as a rock!  A moon rock!

We made a special bag to hold our moon rocks in...

 J decorated his bag with colorful "space rocks!"

We know that the moons surface is very rough and mountainous with lots of craters.  

We made craters in kinetic sand with rocks...

 How many moon do you think there are?  We learned that Earth only has one moon, but other planets have as many as 67 moons!  We also learned that the moon is only about 1/4 size of Earth.  That means, you could almost fit 4 moons inside of one Earth!

Mother Goose gave us a new moon balancing game!

 First we set up ramps and tried rolling our game pieces down the ramp.  We experimented with how we set the pieces on the ramp to see if it would make a difference of how far they would roll...

 We tried to get the pieces to land on the number 7 counting card...

 A few of them did, but most of them rolled off...

 Then we played our new moon balancing game!  The kids rolled the color dice and placed the same color piece on the moon.  They continued until the pieces fell or the moon fell over...

 After playing our game the kids just played on their own with the game pieces.  They stacked them up to make a tall "birthday cake," and then sang "Happy Birthday" to their friends.

 Letter S in our workbooks today...

 We used our game pieces as full moons and some plastic crescent moons that I had as math manipulatives when completing our addition worksheet in our math workbook...

 This was our book for the day.  It was a bit complicated, but still good for exposing the kids to new vocabulary and new concepts.  The most important thing I wanted them to remember from this book is that the moon looks like it is changing shape throughout the month, but it really isn't.

For our snack we made moons with rice cakes, peanut butter, banana slices, and a few mini marshmallows.  The kids spread the peanut butter with a Popsicle stick.

 Who knew?  When J saw we were having rice cakes he was jumping for joy!  Apparently he L-O-V-E-S rice cakes!

 That is one mountainous moon with lot's of craters!

One of the projects for tomorrow is to make "SPACE PAPER!"

 In the afternoon we attempted this project.  I wanted it to be dry and be ready for the kids to scratch on by Thursday morning.  First we colored our paper entirely with crayons.  I give this activity a 10 because it kept the kids busy for a long time.

 After coloring we painted over our paper with black tempera paint that we mixed with a few drops of dish soap.  We applied a very thin layer.   We will cross our fingers and hope our paper dries and becomes scratch art paper!

If it doesn't work, I bought a back up!