What in the World?

Dear Parents,

We completed our planets this week. We covered our Uranus in glue and blueish feathers.  We used bubble wrap to make our Neptune, but not before we spent lots of time and fine motor skills popping all the bubbles. It was exciting and a lot of effort.  We made a tiny dwarf  Pluto using black clay. 

While half the class worked out in gymnastics with Casey, the rest of us worked on making a moon mobile. We used clay and pipe cleaners. We hung the moons in our outer space mural.

We began building our spaceship. We cut two giant boxes into four boxes. One friend said, "Two plus two is four, and three plus one is four." After everyone had a chance to get inside, one person asked, “How will we make them go?” We asked the children if they thought our pretend spaceships would really fly around the room? We talked about what real spaceships are made of, and how many people, and how many years it takes to make them fly. 

During circle we acted like robots and then talked about robots and machines that go into outer space to do research. One such machine took nine years to travel to Pluto and do a fly by. We looked at how far our Earth is from our Pluto and thought about a spacecraft traveling that far. Wow.

We made flags in preparation for our trip to the moon. The class made thirty-six different flags. We looked in a book at flags for inspiration. Some copied flags they liked and some made up their own flags. Flags that children liked and copied were from Japan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Jamaica, Mauritius, Monaco, Libya, Angola, and the U.S.A.

We read about the mystery of the missing tomato, the first one grown in outer space on the International Space Station. And about Frank Rubio, the astronaut who grew it, spending more than a year in outer space. 

Parents will be invited for our Blast Off! on Thursday February 15th at 9:30 am. The class will board the spaceship, take a trip to the moon, and return in approximately twenty minutes. 

Signing off, 

Therese

Here Comes the Sun

Dear Parents,

We began our week creating the sun. We painted a big yellow circle and added lots of glitter. We made some rays and added paper “fire” stuffing to the inside to make it hotter. Someone kept saying, “I’m hot in here because of the sun!” 

We read Sun, The Earth, and Outer Space. We sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star when we read that the sun is a star. 

We looked out our windows and saw the real sun shining in, and we saw the shadows of us. We sang the beginning of Here Comes the Sun. Many children were familiar with the song.

While people got a workout in gymnastics with Casey and Malik, in the classroom we created two more planets: Mercury and Jupiter. We used bumpy silver material for Mercury and formed it into a circle using silver duct tape. Someone had the idea to form it around a piece of crumpled paper. Our Jupiter is made of many connected pipe cleaners. We added sixteen moons, but read the next day in an updated book that Jupiter has sixty seven moons!

We hung up the sun and our first five planets. When we hung the Earth, we sang She’s Got the Whole World in Her Hands.

In the block area this week, the children built a spaceship and traveled to several planets. At one point, they were all seen sleeping on the spaceship. We listened to Ground Control to Major Tom. The next day many children helped build the Castle of Anglinar. They used almost every single small block. It was such a big castle that one person said, “It’s actually a village.” It takes a village.

We made a big outer space mural. We looked at pictures of the night sky and read about stars, shooting stars, asteroids, and comets. We saw pictures of constellations and the Milky Way. We painted our mural as black as the night and added Jackson Pollock-inspired stars to our mural. 

We read a book about what it’s like to be an astronaut. One person said they wanted to be an astronaut when they grow up. We went around the circle and others said what they wanted to be: a pilot, a scientist, a marine pilot, Minnie Mouse, a taekwondo master, a power ranger waiting at the moon, and a lion shooter. One friend said his mama is a lawyer and another said his dad flew to Jupiter one time. 

We told the class we could leave planet earth together. We counted to three and then all jumped up at the same time. It was a quick trip. So we did it twice. Afterwards, we talked about how gravity pulls us back down. 

We made a black hole by using some of our black mural, poking tiny holes in it, and adding a light bulb inside. We hung it near our outer space mural. We read about black holes. One friend kept saying he was going to tell his mom about it, because she wouldn't believe it. He especially liked the part that said a black hole could pull a beam of light inside. 

We told the class that we will be building a spaceship and taking a trip to the moon. “A real spaceship?!” some shouted. We asked them if they thought we could build a real spaceship? They knew we couldn’t. After we finish making the universe, we will start building the ship and preparing for our trip. 

Have an out-of-this-world weekend,

Therese

P.S. We also made Saturn this week!