Hello, Friendly Fox Families!
What a wonderful time we have had wrapping up our Outer Space unit. It has been a truly fun-filled two weeks. The children seem to have really enjoyed all the pretend play areas we have offered, from the Reading Rocket to the Space Station Control Panels they built themselves, the Space Suits they each made, and the jet packs we blasted around in outdoors. This was a really fun unit for me to teach as well, so a good time was indeed had by all!
This week we enjoyed making our own toy rocket ships to bring home, making our own December calendars, a fine motor challenge of building pyramids with stacking stars, and building our own giant rocket ships in small groups. We introduced our “Solar System in Motion” rhyming song and sang it all week, read a wonderful book by Gail Gibbons, “The Moon Book,” made our own Moons with craters and mountains, and even practiced dropping rocks into kinetic sand to see how the formations on the Moon came to be. The best part of this day was getting to gear up like space explorers with handmade jet packs and blast off exploring Space outdoors. This was so much fun for all of us! We read a wonderful National Geographic book about Planets, painted our own beautiful watercolor planets, played with a floating Solar System in water, completed some huge Solar System floor puzzles together, and played a fun dice-rolling rocket building game. We read another wonderful book about stars, galaxies and constellations, then made our own constellations, played a fun Space memory/matching game together, added our new Solar System song to our special journals, and built some beautiful Solar Systems with some fun loose parts. We finished off our week with a fun-filled day of pajamas, show and tell, small world Space sensory bins and reading in our Reading Rocket with flashlights. We also completed our Art Show portfolios and sent much of their beautiful creations home for you to enjoy together. Many friends have said they couldn’t wait to hang some of it up at home! We had two fun make-up music classes with Marci and enjoyed stories with Bob.
When we return we will begin a fun week of Winter and Snow activities and introduce our Author of the Month: Jan Brett. I have lots of fun activities planned for the coming month! I have truly enjoyed this wonderful group of children this semester. It is truly delightful to witness the joy and wonder with which they are learning and growing at school. Thank you for sharing these sweet ones with us!We hope everyone has a wonderfully delightful Winter Break, and we will see you in the New Year!
Warmly,
Wynne, Nancy, & Christina
