Who wouldn't want to take an adventure into space? Not us at Amanda's Little Academy. We love space and all its fun that comes with it. I'm able to give the children these experiences using Mother Goose Time. I've been using MGT for almost a year now and love it. It has been the best possible learning booster for the children in my program. I receive all these materials free of charge in exchange for telling about my experiences with their curriculum. This, week we walked about Blast off to Space. MGT breaks it down into four weeks in little subtitles. This week, we broke it down into Space from Earth. We talked about the stars, sun, moon, astronomers and comets. I love seeing the children engage and be so into the MGT themes. They pick ones that children are into and it makes it that much more special. Star: We did an circle time activity about catching stars. The children loved this game and were great at listening during this activity to the instructions. I use the name tags to show the improvement on the children's writing. I also use them as role call tools for our welcome song. I save them so that the families can see the change in the writing on the child and see the progression over time. Star headbands were easy for the children to make. My daycare children decided they just wanted to use special scented markers to decorate their stars. Afterwards, the children wore the headbands around while dancing to "twinkle, twinkle, little star." Sun: The children were giving yellow paint to paint their sun and then after it dried they applied eyes and made a face on the sun. We used this to talk about how hot the sun was and how we need to make sure that we protect ourselves from the sun. We read several books about the sun the children did amazing at interacting with the book discussions. Moon: We as a class made moon dough. The children loved it but boy was it so messy. The more messier an activity the more the children engage in it. They also worked on their journal cover page. They tore paper to glue and create their moon. I did it this way so they could focus on their fine motor development.. They also created moon rocks using fine motor and crunch aluminum foil. The children wanted more to fill their bags. We filled our bags after one child recalled that our book talked about all the moon rocks so we needed to make many. Astronomers: We talked about an astronomer is a person that studies the stars. The children decorated their telescope. Then they pretended to be looking at the stars. I bought a cool projector kit that helped tie this in with being an astronomer. The children had an amazing time looking at it. Comets: Comets in Space was a great activity to get the children to listen and follow instructions. My 6 year old was the one that was really into finding all the hidden items. Another great activity that she loved was the building comets and stars. She thought the pieces looked like glass. She asked me if she could really use them. We talked about how they were safe and not glass. She said that it was very easy for her to create the comets and stars. My 22 month old even tried to do the activities but I found that she had more fun just putting the pieces on the paper. I used this to talk to them about shapes and how many sides they have. Such an amazing week using Mother Goose Time. www.mothergoosetime.com | |