Week 14 - Wednesday

Circle time:
As described in earlier circle time post
Letters of the week: O and P
Theme of the week: Outer Space and Planets

Arts & crafts:
Today the kids made outer space collages by gluing cutouts of various planets onto black construction paper. Gabe chose to add on the planet names as well.




Free play at stations:
None.

Story time:
Dora Climbs Star Mountain by Inches/A&J Studios
Barney - Just Imagine by Shrode/Eubank
Zoom to the Moon by Lee/Saunders
Earth by Martin
The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System by Cole/Degen

Cooperative game:
Today we pretended that we were astronauts landing on different planets in our space crafts. We talked about various facts as we went about our make-believe explorations, facts that the kids had learned during circle time this week and various iPad games. For example, when we landed on Neptune we said things like "Wow, it sure is cold on this planet!" or "Wow there are tall mountains here!" when we landed on Mars.

Science experiment:
This week's science theme: Outer Space and Planets of course!

Space Capsules
I made these space capsules for the kids and we used them in today's science experiment, letting them fall from the second story of our house and comparing data like which fell the fastest and which went the farthest, as well as why they never landed upside down!




Physical activity:
None.

Outing/social time:
1 hour at the YMCA childcare.

Worksheets:
Coloring O and P word pictures, tracing letters O and P, tracing O and P words, matching lowercase to uppercase letters M-P, counting and finding numeral, writing numerals 7 and 8, finding same, cutting small zig-zag lines.

Hands on math:
Today we used marbles for our math play because they look like little planets! The kids sorted them by size and colour and also played simple addition and subtraction games with them. We also did counting and estimating games and once we were done the kids then decided to chose 9 marbles to represent the sun and 8 planets and put them in order.



Computers:
Outer Space and Planets games on the iPad (Alien Rock Lite, Letter Wars, Space Images, Solar System Lite, Rocket Chimp, 8 Planets).

Music:
Danced and sang to our Outer Space and Planets theme compilation cd.

French:
French is emphasized throughout the entire day; especially theme related words. Today we practiced saying "J'ai faim" when they are hungry and "J'ai soif" when they are thirsty, and also continued to reinforce all of the notions that we covered in previous weeks. We will continue to practice these sentences all week.