3/16/10 - 3/18/10

Tuesday, 3/16/10

I had the children begin with their Journals this morning. I asked them to write the first letter of each or our planets. We sang our planet song many times to help jog the brain. I had our planet word cards on the table as a resource as well. It ended up being a group effort but we accomplished our goal. :)

At MM we learned more facts about our planets and even learned a silly sentence that was meant to help you remember the order of the planets in the solar system. Just like our song helps us to remember. We created our own silly sentence with random words. This is a great exercise for home. Name letters in the alphabet and have your child come up with a word that begins with that letter. After writing our letter G on the dry erase board it was off to AM centers.

We took all the planets we had created last week and began creating our solar system. This was a multi step process that all the kids did really well on. They each had a black paper with their painted Sun. We worked on finding our planets and putting them in the correct order in relation to the sun. We then added Saturn's and Uranus's rings. They punched our stars and glued them where they liked. I then put their silver finger print above their special planet. The idea was for them to create a little person/being that would represent themselves on their planet. :) My friends had their own ideas. :) We have some elaborate little aliens that are gracing our solar system now. All in all this was a very fun project to see to completion.

The rest of our day was low key. We played in the gym and when returning for PM Centers played quietly in our room. I had each child meet with me to add another fact or two to their Planet Chart. I love that they are able to recall facts to me now about their planets. They have really taken ownership of having a special one assigned to them.

Wednesday, 3/17/10 (Ms. Chrissie's Corner)

Today was interesting.... it was one of those days where you teach "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again...and then change plans".

We had several activities revolving around rockets and space exploration. At morning meeting we read from "The Best Book of Spaceships" and learned about how a rocket is built, how it lifts off and clears our atmosphere to enter space where there is no air, and no gravity. You can ask your child about such terms as the stages of a rocket ship, what gravity is, what our sun is, a meteor, a comet, an asteroid, a solar system and a galaxy! Between the entire class, we answered them all! We also read the book, "Stars, Stars, Stars" this afternoon and enjoyed answering what you use to look at stars (telescope) and what constellations are. Everyone knew that planet Earth was in the Milky Way galaxy and as the book reviewed each planet, they were right there shouting out what they knew too. So at the end of the book, I decided to quiz them (shhh! they didn't know it was their first pop quiz!) on their planets. They all got A+ too! I read the descriptive facts given at the end of the book for a planet and they told me which planet it was. I was very, very impressed. So impressed, in fact, that when I turned the page and saw all about a dozen glossary words like the ones mentioned above, I promised to reward them with a bone for the class if they did half as well on those as they did with their planet knowledge. And you guessed it! They earned that bone fair and square!

If only things had worked out as easily for our rocket experiment. It began well when we viewed about 15 minutes of a dvd about rocket ships and astronaut life from the Kennedy Space Center. Then armed with knowledge, we headed outside for our own little lift off experiment with vinegar and baking soda. But, "Houston, we had a problem!". We tried several times and then decided to be like the scientists who surely had to try more than once to get a rocket ship into space and try again another day (maybe with new batteries?!).

We now had plenty of time to make astronaut snacks for later in the day. We made pudding in ziploc baggies. Each student poured in their own powder packet and I added milk to a baggie with their name on it. We zipped it back up and commenced with shaking and squeezing for 90 seconds. We got in alot of counting practice! Ms. Tina came in to help too, which was wonderful because next we made Tang! We added Tang powder and the kids screwed on their lids (with their first name initial on it) and shook the Tang for another 90 seconds. As a class, we carried our rocket ship food to the kitchen refrigerator just in time for chapel.

It was rather chilly outside, but we needed fresh air, so we played outside. It was a wild playground day and I sure hope all that cool, crisp almost-spring air chased away the crazies from cabin fever we all seem to have!

After recess, we all worked on a dot-to-dot rocket ship and then played quietly with Concentration, Light Bright, Moon Rocks, Prisms, Geo-Wheels and Tanagrams. I played in the Concentration game and I have to say the friends I played with have amazing memories! And finally, the success story of the day - the astronaut snack was a big hit! We cut the corners off the ziploc bags and practiced being astronauts and slurped the pudding right from the bag! The Tang was great too. When is the last time you've had Tang?!

Thursday, 3/18/10

Today was our day for conferences and we were blessed to have Ms. Melissa take over the class for the day. I had full confidence that the children would have fun and learn in our absence. :) Here is Ms. Melissa's journal about her day with my wonderful class.

Ms. Cari and Ms. Chrissie were out of the classroom most of the day on Thursday at parent conferences, but Ms. Melissa got the opportunity to be the substitue teacher for the day. (Personal Note from Ms. Melissa--If you've never volunteered to sub in a classroom, you are really missing out! You find out so much about the kids' day and how every little thing--from the dress-up corner to the kitchen--is a learning opportunity!)

The kids came in and wrote their name on a special rocket journal page, and counted the numbers of letters in their name, writing that on their journal page as well. This was great preparation for an activity that we did later in the day. The class also led Ms. Melissa through morning meeting--they really know their routine!--and we read "Hedgie Blasts Off" by Jan Brett. Hedgie is just the janitor at the Space Center, but he is one heroic hedgehog when he's given the opportunity to go up into space and save the day! We learned that every hedgehog--and person--is important and has the chance to do great things. And we also learned about propulsion when pressure blasted Hedgie and all the coins out of the crater and helped the flowers bloom again. We also thought it was funny that all the important scientists in the book were dogs!

To leave morning meeting, each child wrote the letter "G" on the board and made the "G" sound. Of course, when the sound bag items came back out later in the day, we talked about the two sounds of "g"--hard G (as in Griffin) and soft G (as in Giraffe). That "G" can be pretty confusing!

Just as we'd done with the rocket journal page, we got out some special colorful rocket shapes and wrote one letter of our names on each shape. Each child built those letters into a tall name rocket, and then added a special "blast off" rocket with the number of letters in their name. This was a great graphing opportunity! We could see that Emmie Rose had the most letters in her name with 9, and Will and Jack had the fewest number of letters in their names with 4. There were more kids with 6 letters in their name in the classroom than any other number.

Lauren shared a great joke with us at lunchtime that made us all laugh: Why did the cookie go to the doctor? Because he felt "crummy!" After lunch we had our awesome gym time with Ms. Jane, along with Ms. Lyneve and Ms. Leigh's classes. She had us running, jumping and even already looking for Easter Eggs!

Ms. Cari and Ms. Chrissie had a break in all their meetings in the afternoon and were able to come back to the classroom to try a real rocket experiment! Just like with Hedgie, the pressure built up in the rocket--but unfortunately, our rocket didn't go flying like Hedgie did. It made some serious noise but we had a little malfunction on the flight deck and it never quite worked correctly. Back to the drawing board!