We built rocket ships by rolling a dice and finding the pieces we needed. Another rocket game used small blocks, unifix cubes, or caps to make a rocket ship a certain number high. We had space books to manipulate and felt pieces to create with. We used our handwriting skills to trace stars and to use tweeers to pick out craft foam stars in black beans. There were "moon rocks and spaceships" (tin foil balls and plastic grape tomato containers) with tongs and small astronaut puppets. We had green moon sand also with marbles, more tomato containers and astronaut, rocket ship, and moon buggy plastic figurines. We used large parquetry blocks to build some rocket ships and colored space ship pictures. Kids used small finger rockets to shoot the moon. We used large rockets later in the week (no picutre).
We learned about the solar system and planets. We played with alien and robot wind up toys. We used rocket cards to play a color "go fish" type game. We learned about shadows because it was Groundhog Day and because of the Earth's shadows to get the different phases of the moon. We used small googly eyes to give the alien cards their eyes. In shredded paper, we found small plastic planets and made constellations with star erasers and popsicle sticks. Our turntable made great solar systems with markers and we added sticker planets, stars and astronauts. Some kids loved making star bead necklaces or use celestial rubber stamps. We played a space lotto game that had all kinds of space words and concepts on it.
We blasted through space using our gameboard as we moved around the planets. We used space tinker toys to build all kinds of structures. We also matched the phases of the moon with cards. In circle time, we had a great time making craters in the moon with a tub of flour and small wooden balls. The "poof" of the flour all over our rug was a hit! We sang "oodles" of blast off songs, astronauts visiting things in space, and of planet songs. We had star fingerplays and lots of other rhymes. We played alien tic-tac-toe with alien and spacemen pieces. We learned about things that give us light and how the earth spins and moves to make summer and winter, day and night and the hit of Mrs. Bailey's group was playing a rocket ship alien hide and seek game. At least once a day, we danced and moved to Laurie Berkner's Rocket Ship Run and the Wiggles Walking on the Moon. I believe those will be the most memorable songs of the unit!
