This week’s theme is Out of this World. The children were asked, “What does Out of this World” mean to you and they said, planets, Milky Way, Solar System, and moon. We talked in depth about different planets such as Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Milky Way, moon, etc. They learned that some planets have many moons while Earth only has one. We talked about the sizes of the planets and the children were shown pictures of the planets and we talked about how they are the same/different. They learned that astronauts work as a team because it involves multiple people responsible for certain duties while they are in space and they learned that the people on Earth working at NASA are responsible for helping the astronauts if they needed help. We talked about some famous astronauts such as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and many other astronauts.
The children used the different toys in the classroom to build rocket ships, space stations, planets, and they also wanted to pretend to build houses on planets as if humans could live on the different planets. Some of the children pretended to be astronauts and people who helped the astronauts get to space. I observed the children talking about duties and who will get to do what such as monitoring where they are in space, who prepares the food, who drives the rocket ship, etc. They learned about teamwork which is important skill they need for school and in life.
They learned how to work together by painting the Earth and planets on poster board. We had them work in 2 teams of 8 and they had to figure out who will draw and who will paint. They did pretty good job of working together. They had to think of a planet to draw as if they had discovered it and then they gave it a name. They drew a picture of stars using chalk and black construction paper.
It was a fun week learning about space, NASA, astronauts, etc. They asked us questions and we were able to answer them and if we were not sure, we looked it up. They remembered some stuff from when went to the Lake Erie Science Center over the Summer and we talked about what we remembered. One of the children remembered moon rocks and asked me if it it was possible to see them again. I explained that when we go back to Lake Erie Science Center, we can take a look at it.