The Meow Cats have been playing with ideas about outer space this week. We read space books in our “black hole”, watercolored planet mobiles to make our room into outer space, and watched a video about the International Space Station. This is one of my favorite tours of the space station with American astronaut Sunita Williams. She talks about things preschoolers can relate to, brushing her teeth, food, and going to the bathroom. We talked about space scientists from around the world living on the space station, 254 miles above the earth’s surface. Sunita shows the space suits that they wear to go outside the space station. We read some stories about rockets, the moon, and the planets. I try to mix simple fiction stories for young children with simple scientific concepts about space.
We are going to make the sun and the planets next week to put on our ceiling, and we’ll make a 3 D asteroid belt to suspend in our solar system.
The Meow Cats have been really interested in the Dinosaur unit that has been happening across the hall, so that is where we will travel next. We’ll turn our black hole into a volcano with finger painted lava and start to learn and play with different kinds of dinosaurs. We’ll sing dinosaur songs, build some dinosaurs for our class, and learn about the earth before humans. It is a perfect intro to egg layers as we prepare to get our eggs to put into the incubator. I showed the kids the incubator on Friday, and they are already wondering if they could hatch some baby alligators. We’ll talk about all the different kind of animals that lay eggs, and each year someone always suggests that we hatch at least one dinosaur. I told them Friday that the chicken is related to the dinosaur.
Thanks so much for sending your children with boots for our rainy spring. Remember to sunscreen your children before school.. we like to spend a lot of time outdoors as it starts to get warm. We may have snack or even circle time outdoors. If your child stays for the afternoon, you could fill out a sunscreen form and bring some for us to apply after afternoon recess. Please remember to send a water bottle every day. When it is hot we will take them outside.
Hannah and the Brilliant Butterfly families are almost finished with their conferences. I will put up a sign up sheet for our conferences this week. Please sign up for a spring conference.
Thanks for sharing your children with us in the Meow Cats class.
