The Honeybees are headed for space, and this idea is creating a lot of conversation. We began with a simple picture book called “I Want to Be An Astronaut” and asked questions about what we knew about outer space and what we wanted to learn. We introduced words like solar system, planet, and gravity. We already know that the sun is our star from our birthday celebrations walking on our earth around the sun while we sing.
The Honeybees liked “Life on Mars” by Jon Agee, and asked for it each day. This simple story sparks a lot of questions… also giggles. The small astronaut takes his rocket to Mars to look for life, bringing along a chocolate cupcake just to be friendly. He finds life in a small yellow flower but doesn’t quite see the quiet alien creature ( a giant fox??) following him around. He returns to his spaceship with the flower, takes off for earth, and discovers that something has eaten his chocolate cupcake. After the story, we talk about who has really been to Mars… just robots…and they are very interested in this idea. We recently read the book “Happy Birthday From Mars.”
We played in black bean sensory bins with planets, stars, space vehicles, and astronauts. We made craters, planets, and star cakes with sparkly play dough, and taped together a rocket ship for our adventures. Really, we might try to build another space vehicle as we start to explore the different types of space travel. Do you know that I’m really interested in the International Space Station? This week we’ll do a tour of the station with Sunita Williams. The Honeybees will learn how astronauts eat, brush their teeth, exercise, sleep, and go to the bathroom in space.
We talked about NASA’s current moon project, Artemis, set to launch in 2024 when most of the Honeybees will be in the second grade. We’ll check out a few NASA videos about the building of this new system. They were surprised that no girls had been to the moon yet!
We talked about gravity and played with some ramps and cars to show how gravity pulls things down. We aren’t quite seeing how gravity holds us down, but perhaps we will when we see Sunita Williams’ tour of the space station. Her hair is floating. Her whole body is floating, and her water droplet that she used to brush her teeth is a perfect sphere.
I’d like to do our first show and share on Friday, but I’m going to make it very specific. Please bring in a picture of your pet or pets and we are going to play out the Jack Ezra Keats story of “The Pet Show.” It can absolutely be printed at home on just a piece of paper or you could represent this pet with a stuffed animal. If you do not have a pet, your child could bring a stuffed animal that they love.
With all the sicknesses being in full swing around town, please note our illness policy. If your child is vomiting, has diarrhea, or a fever, they need to stay at home a full 24 hours after the last incident. A fever needs to be gone for 24 hours without medication. I’m already looking forward to true spring. We’ll keep washing our hands and trying to sneeze into our elbows.
The hydroponic garden is starting to look like a garden, and some of the children are ready to eat our lettuce. I think we’ll let it grow just a bit. I’m thinking about making a vegetable “Stone Soup” in the next few weeks as well. We’ll each bring a vegetable and read the story as we chop and place our vegetables in the pot.
It’s time to look forward to our favorite parts of the preschool spring. Is there anyone who wants to take on our baby chicks after they hatch. I’ve hatched between 3 and 11 in the past few years. Last year we hatched a flock of roosters. I’d like to schedule our hatch for early May. We’ll also grow some more caterpillars in early May. The painted ladies seem to like to sit on our fingers more than monarchs.
One week until February.
