Space Circle Time & Gym

Below are some Circle Time favorites during the Space Unit.  We played Alien and Space Man tic-tac-toe.  It is always interesting to watch where kids are developmentally, as many just had fun putting a space man or alien in an open space, while others had strategy and real thought in the placement of their piece.  We learned about tally marks as we kept score to find out whether space men or aliens won.  Alphabet space used blue paper plates with giant capital letters on them.  Depending on the class, we threw bean bags into the plates and named the letter or said the sound of the letter on the plate, or we played a space letter hunt.  One of our science teacher parents let us borrow their moon, sun, and earth stuffed animals.  We used them the practice the orbits around one another.  For the M or Not M (picture hard to see below) game, each student got a small white paper plate with a giant M on it.  Mrs. D showed pictures to the kids.  If the picture began with the /M/ sound, we raised our plates and sang "moon, moon, moon".  Before we played the game, we listened to the Laurie Berkner song, "Moon, Moon, Moon".  Delicious fruit rocket ships using cut up fruit and a wooden skewer were a hit.  Mrs. Bailey's alien puppet made us laugh with silly words and sound play.  We learned about things that give us light (such as a light bulb) or do not give us light (such as a book).  To learn how craters on the moon were made, we used a tub of flour and large wooden balls.  When you drop the wooden ball into the flour tub, the flour goes "poof" and a nice crater hole is made.  Their favorite part was the "poof" and then all the mess it made on the floor around the tub!  Not pictured was learning how the sun gives us light using a lamp and the globe.  We saw that when the earth turns, half the Earth has daytime and the other half has night time.  We also saw why we have summer and winter time.  Of course, we also had a lot of songs, dancing, and fun fingerplays to go along with space!

GYM TIME

We had a "blast" (yes, pun intended!).  

1.)  We used blow up space shuttles to play a blast off and landing game.  Each child got their own space shuttle to use.  They each stood on their own rubber dot on teh floor (their space station).  We counted from 10 to BLAST OFF!  They got to take off and run around the gym until the space commander (Mrs. D) told them to come in for a landing.  They would go back to their space station and wait for the countdown.  

2.)  After this game, we had simple relay races where one person would stand on one side of the gym, fly across the gym to their waiting partner, and then hand off the shuttle to their partner, who would then take off across the gym to the next waiting person. 

3.)  The final game was using our bodies on a scooter board.  The scooter was our space ship.  The kids would lay on their bellies, push their feet up against the wall and then used their feet and legs to push off the wall to "blast off". 

Space Games

Our Space Unit is one of our most popular themes during the school year.  Everyone fantasizes about being an astronaut!  The kids just LOVED our giant cardboard spaceship (see below)!  We donned some astronaut costumes and BLAST OFF! 

Below are some of our sensory table time games we had for this unit.  We found small eraser stars hidden in this special bubber dough, found colored stars in our rice and karo syrup sensory bottles, and cut out star shapes in flubber using cookie cutters.  We picked out the colored stars in black beans with large tweezers or clips and then sort them into a colored tray.  Playdough is always a favorite, especially when you have space molds!  Our sensory tables were a hit as well.  In one table, we had moon sand with all kinds of space men, marbles, and alien spacecraft (recycles cherry tomato containers!).  If you are not familiar with moon sand, it comes in a bunch of different colors (ours was blue), and when you squish it, it molds together.  In our other table, we had rice, moon rocks (aluminum foil balls), and more

Some "strong hand" activities included; using star and sun shape hole punches.  Many children ended up making math patterns with their paper punches.  We made solar systems by spinning the Lazy Susan while holding a marker to it to make the circles.  Then we added space stickers and foam shapes.  The kids really enjoyed carefully placing cool space looking marbles on top of golf tees.  Cutting while following wavy curves, tracing star shapes, and decorating 3-D cardboard space ships were all popular activities as well.  Kids made star bead necklaces, often times in math patterns again!  The rolling giggles and laughter when the little alien creatures popped up after you pushed them down were just precious.  I think it was the anticipation of waiting for them to pop was half the fun!

We matched star faces and the planets in the solar system orbit order.  Making constellations with star erasers and black pipe cleaners produced quite creative "pictures in the sky".  Some kids made star flyers that spin and wobble when thrown because of the straw center.  We compared sizes of rockets using Unifix math cubes to build them a certain number amount high.  Two big favorites were large motor activities.  "Shoot the Moon" used foam rockets that we shot at a moon and stars board (made out of a large black trash bag, star stickers, and a moon print.  "Catch a Comet" used water jugs with their bottoms cut off to use as a "catcher" and a giant aluminum foil ball with streamers coming out of it.  Puzzles, creating rocket ships using math blocks, counting stars, space lotto, and spaceship "go fish" rounded off our unit.