Friendly Frogs- The Moon, Planets, and Stars

I took a trip into space with my Friendly Frogs, this week!
Literature:

Many of these books have real photos of space, from Nasa.

The children learned that there are no people (except for the astronauts that visited from Earth), no air, no food, no water, and no sound on the moon.

Book: The Moon by Carmen Bredeson
Book: I Want to Be and Astraonaut by Stephanie by Maze
Book: Goodnight Moon By Margaret Wise Brown
Book: Let’s Go to the Moon by Janis Knudsen Wheat
Book: If You Decide to Go to the Moon by Faith McNulty

Video: Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle

I have a narrated story telling of Papa Please Get the Moon for Me on dvd. The children were SO excited to "watch a movie" at preschool. The version I have, has the words captioned at the bottom of the screen, but CLICK HERE for a similar version to what I showed, so they can watch it again and again at home. We talked about what parts of the story were real and what was make believe.

It's a great little story, full of the expected beautiful tissue paper collage illustrations by Eric Carle. I really love the music in the background and the narrator's accent. Enjoy!

Share: Bring something shaped like a circle: The children brough plates, wheels, eyeballs, lids, candy dishes, snowmen, cups and more.

Motor Skills: Upside Down Art

This was a tricky task for the children that encouraged them to engage their motor skills in a different way. I taped several pieces of double stick tape to pieces of black paper, then attached the papers to the underside of the table.

The children were challenged to lay on their backs and stick pom poms on the pieces of tape hanging over their heads. They experienced gravity when the pom poms slipped from their hands and fell on their faces, and pretended they were astronauts tied into the beds and chairs of a spaceship (we read about this in the book, first) so they wouldn't float away.

Sensory: Moon Dough and star cookie cutters. What does the ground on the moon feel like? Since there is no air or wind on the moon, if you make a footprint there, it will stay there forever, just like a finger print in playdough!
Dramatic Play: telescopes-explain that a telescope is something we use to get a closer look at the stars and other planets. I showed the children photos from a few books of pictures taken through a real telescope. Then they "looked at the stars" through a set of play telescopes I made with wrapping paper tubes, black paper, and rubber bands. When I made them, I copied a few simple constellations from a star chart by poking holes through the paper at the ends of the "telescopes" with a straight pin. I put a different constellation in each telescope

and when the children pointed looked into the scopes and pointed them toward the light, the stars would appear!

Aren't these little star gazers the cutest?

Math: Bigger, Smaller: each of the balloons that I blew up were a different size. As a group, we sorted them biggest to smallest.

Language Question: What is it like on the moon? What is in Space? Record answers.

Practical Life: real vs make believe (Can we really climb a ladder to the moon like Monica's father did in the story? Did astronauts really land on our moon?)

Music and Movement: They Might Be Giants Planet song: The children had a blast dancing to this song. We did a different movement (clap, jump, roll arms, spin, etc) for each of the planets.

Here is the music video for the song:

Vocabulary: We learned a lot of unfamiliar words and concepts today, but the one word I really worked with the children to help them remember was gravity. I gave them a very "4 year old" explanation that "gravity is the force that pulls us down". Immediately, my StarWars fan, Max, chimed in with, "The Force! I know the force. They don't have The Force on the Moon, Mrs Meg! That's silly." Maybe my "4 yr old explanation" would be better understood if it came from George Lucas.

Then Jacob showed us all how there's "no gravity" in his balloon trick!

Gross Motor: Astronaut Leaps! There is less gravity on the moon to pull you down, so astronauts can jump a lot higher, like they are light as a balloon! The children took turns jumping over "craters" and throwing around balloons. We also played a game to see who could keep their balloon in the air the longest. Before heading back to Earth on our rocket, we counted down from 10 to 1 and shouted Blast Off!

I love my job so much, and am totally over the moon for these children.

What a fun day.