P is for Planet

It has been a fun and productive learning week. On Sunday night, I was actually ready a very different kind of week. Our Monday started off with having to get all three kids off to a sitter so we could attend a meeting for our foster daughter. My thought was that a morning long meeting would probably mean no school on Monday or at least it would have to wait until the afternoon. I find if Monday school is off to the a rough start it finds a way of leaking into the next day too! However, our neighbor (who I have to add, watched the kids on her day off) e-mailed me the night before and asked me what our letter of the week was going to be. I replied that we would be working on P and focusing on planets. When I went to pick the kids up, I found out that they had spent part of the morning on P related activities  They played with plastic planets in a bean sensory bin, read books about planets, played princess memory, came up with a list of animals that start with P, and made letter Ps out of pasta! We have the best neighbors. The thoughtful act of taking the time to help me out with school time while I was busy really set a positive tone to the week. We ended up accomplishing everything I had planned and had some fun doing it!  

Take a look at our P is for Planet week! 

Books: I Am Planet Earth By: Jean Marzollo

First Big Book of Space By: Catherine D. Hughes

Every Planet has a Place By: Becky Baines

Exploring our letter P box. This simple activity that starts off our letter of the week, continues to be a favorite . I think they love the element of surprise. 

We focused on Planet Earth the first day to help  build the concept that Earth is actually part of something much bigger. For our art project, Ava and Dominic made coffee filter Earths. They used washable blue and green marker to color the filter. 

 

Next, they used a spray bottle to spray the filter. This causes the marker to bleed and gives it a tie-dye effect. This project was a great because even Dominic could do this one independently (except of course when I had to pry the water away from him because he loved spraying it so much!)

They glued their Earth (after allowing them to dry) onto black paper and added stars. Ava even wrote Planet Earth all by herself! She enjoys being told what letters she need to write to form words. It is neat to watch this interest arise! 

We worked together to make a puzzle of the solar system. 

Ava explored how Earth experiences day and night. Every time she "rotated" away from the flashlight it was night. When she rotated toward the light it was day. 

Ava worked on writing her numbers using a space shuttle count down worksheet found  at Kindergarten Nana

I created a pattern activity where Ava needed to place the missing pattern pieces in the pattern. She is used to  adding on to patterns. Omitting parts of the pattern in the middle created an additional challenge. 

Practicing writing the letter P

One of our math activities required Ava to count stars and label the number with the corresponding planet. This activity was a challenge because it went up to 15. She has made a lot of progress with her counting in the last month!

Our culminating activity for the week was a diagram of the solar system. While planning, I tossed around a lot of ideas on how I wanted to build the solar system. I thought it would be fun to create a 3D model with her. But I decided since this won't be the last time we study space, I would wait until she was a little older. I found pictures of all the planets on Kindergarten Nana. This activity was perfect for her because she could do a lot of it independently. 

Ava did all the coloring and really got into using  The First Big Book of Space  as a resource for  choosing how to color  each of them. I was impressed when she added multi-colors to the planets to match the book!

Together, we figured out the order of the planets. This activity was also a great way to work on ordinal numbers. Ava added glitter dots around the planets to represent stars.