Soaring Through the Solar System

The third summer school class I taught was called "Soaring Through the Solar System".  This class I taught to the 5-7 year old age group in the mornings and then in the afternoons I taught this class to the preschool. These two weeks are pretty much a blur......I taught for 10 hours a day (without a single break)....so I'm pretty proud I survived!  I had never taught preschool before and was pretty intimidated about it at first, but it ended up being a lot of fun.  Teaching preschool is VERY different from teaching my 5-7 year-olds.  Some of my preschool kids were only 2....so even though I was teaching the same subject I still had to pretty much create all new activities.


By this point in the summer my camera was completely dead.....so I don't have any pictures of my kids actually doing the activities.....the pictures that are posted on this blog are ones I found from the different blogs and other websites where I found the ideas to do these crafts.  Sorry I don't have any actual photos of my students doing these, but I'll try to do the best with what I have!


For both classes we started the first day by talking about the sun....then days 2-9 we learned about planet a day....and finally on the last day we learned about astronauts and why Pluto is no longer a planet.



Day 1: The Sun
The first day we began by talking about the sun.  My goal for both classes was to teach them a few facts about the sun (such as it is a star, all the planets rotate around it.....it is pretty big etc.).  For some reason one of my preschool students didn't grasp the concept that the sun isn't a planet....and according to her dad, she is still argues with him when he says the sun isn't a planet!

This is the craft we made when we learned about the sun.  I got the idea from a blog you can check out for yourself here. 

Days 2-9: The Planets

We started with the planet closest to the sun, Mercury, and then continued until we covered all the planets.  To help the kids remember some things about the planets we learned the song "The Family of the Sun".  Each day we would add a new verse until we learned the entire song.  I changed the song a little bit....the song was written when Pluto was still a planet so I changed that.  Here are the lyrics:

Chorus:

The family of the sun,

the family of the sun,

there are eight planets,

in the family of the sun.

Mercury is hot,

and Mercury is small.

Mercury has no air to breathe;

it's just a rocky ball.

Chorus

Venus has thick clouds,

that hide what is below.

The air is foul; the ground is hot.

It rotates very slow.

Chorus

We love the Earth, our home,

its oceans and its trees.

We eat its food, we breathe its air,

so no pollution, please.

Chorus

Mars is very red.

It's also dry and cold.

Some day you might visit Mars,

if you are really bold.

Chorus

Great Jupiter is huge

We've studied it a lot.  

We've found that it has lots of moons

and a big red spot.

Chorus

Saturn has great rings.

We wondered what they were.

Now we know their icy rocks.

Which we saw as a blur.

Chorus

Uranus is big.

Its cold and greenish-blue.

We've found it rotates sideways

and has rings around it too.

Chorus

Neptune's far away.

Its cold and green and blue.

The planet has a lot of clouds

and rings around it to.

Chorus

The song is to the tune of the farmer and then dale and the original version of the song can be found here.  

The day we learned about the Earth we made this little craft.  Our goal for that day was to learn about how the earth travels around the sun and the moon travels around the earth.  I think this activity did a great job of showing that.  I found this activity on Pinterest.....a link to the blog can be found here.

We also made this book to help the students remember the planets in order from the sun.  I got the idea from this website, but I changed ours a bit.

Some other great activities for a unit on the solar system can be found at these websites:

Education.com

Nurturing the Tender Years

Kreative in Kinder

I Heart Crafty Things

Deceptively Educational

TPT

Wild Wacky Weather

Each summer at The Capitol School we have our "Summer Explorations".  These are two week classes for preschool up through middle school.  These classes are not only open to students of our Capitol School family, but they are also opened to the public.  This is a great way for us to get to know other great kids/families that attend other schools.  Most of the classes I taught were the 5-7 year old kids, but I did get really brave a teach some preschool as well!  This year I taught 4 out of the 5 sessions.  My goal was to create a blog post at the end of each 2 week session, but somewhere in the middle of teaching 10 hours a day, taking 2 grad classes, taking the MAT, completing my graduate portfolio AND getting ready for the upcoming school year...well, that didn't happen.  So here it is, the end of summer (actually the last 2 weeks of summer) and I'm finally sitting down to blog about what we did this summer.


The first summer school class was titled (in case you couldn't guess from the title of this blog post) Wild Wacky Weather.  Side note......when I was little (somewhere between ages 7-11) I was scared TERRIFIED of storms......we're talking having a panic attack anytime I heard thunder.....so due to being completely terrified I became interested obsessed with the weather.....now thankfully as an adult I am no longer terrified and/or obsessed with weather.....although James Spann is still my hero and I'm not sure what I will do if/when he retires!  Ok back to Wild Wacky Weather......again I had these grand ideas of the blog about this class taking a day-by-day look as to what we did over the course of the two weeks, but that didn't happen.  And probably due to the fact that I flew in from Tanzania, East Africa on Saturday.....well actually Sunday about 2AM......and then started teaching at 7:30AM on Monday, I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted because let's face it I was pretty much in a jet-lagged fog the first week!

So with those excuses (which I hate making, but they are true) I am just going to post the few pictures that I did take and explain a few of the activities that we did get to do during our class.




This was the bulletin board that I made for this class.  No it isn't fancy or really cute, but it only took me about an hour to make and time was something I didn't really have much of, so it worked!

I can't remember which day we made "sky parfaits", but it was one of the first few days of class.  I found this really cute pin on Pinterest (how did I ever teach without it?!?!).  And with a lot of things, the picture I saw wasn't exactly what ours turned out to look like.......but the kids loved them (all, but the two that didn't eat jello....who doesn't eat jello?) so that's all that mattered to me!

Pinterest version of what a "sky parfait" should look like.

Our version of a "sky parfait".

We began the class by learning about clouds.  The kids had a wonderful time learning about clouds and I was really surprised with what all they were able to remember!  We learned everything from the names of clouds, how they form, at what altitude you find the different clouds, and which type of cloud produces what type of weather.  

One activity that was a really big hit was when we created our own clouds using shaving cream and glue.  The kids had a blast getting messy and when the mixture dried it made this really neat foamy type substance!  

To help us be able to identify different types of clouds we created these "cloud watchers".  We printed off pictures of clouds we found on the internet (with the name of the cloud written on it).....then we glued that onto a square piece of card-stock....and finally cut out a square in the center.  This allowed the students to have a "viewing hole" that they could hold up to a cloud and then find which cloud on the side it most resembled. 

The kids LOVED doing this!  I believe the first day we observed clouds for about 45 minuets!  I also had several parents tell me that they couldn't go anywhere without their child identifying every single cloud they saw!  Anyone who is a teacher knows how much that warmed my heart!

We also learned about rainbows and how they form.  I didn't have a super creative craft for this, but this really simple one turned out to be pretty.

After studying about rainbows we also started working on a weather book.  I got the idea from this great blog called Kindergarten Rocks.  If you teach younger kids or have younger children I recommend you checking out this blog.  There are always cute activities to do with your little ones.  We changed a few of the pages (in the blog the entire class only makes one book, but I had each student create their own book), but for the most part our book turned out like theirs.

One science experiment we did while learning about rain was this simple one.  Each student got a cup filled with water, then we added shaving cream to the top and finally added some food color drops.  We watched as the food color drops made their way through the shaving cream and down into the water.

Side note.....and probably only you teachers will understand why I loved this moment so much.....as I was walking around passing out the food coloring droppers I had a student say this to me: "Miss Box, I noticed that my food color drops went through my cloud and into the water before Timmy's.....is this because Timmy has more shaving cream in his cup than mine?".  I LOVE it when this happens.  So we got to have this wonderful discussion about why it was taking some drops longer than others AND we even applied that to the actual clouds that we see in the sky!!

 When we learned about thunderstorms we created this really cute craft.  The students loved it because they got to play with the shaving cream/glue mixture again!  I got this idea from this great little blog called S.B Creatively

One of the highlights each time I teach this class is getting to go on a field trip to our local TV station.  Mr. Scott, one of our local meteorologists, does such a wonderful job with the kids.  He gave the kids a tour of the studio, showed them how he predicts the weather, and even let them have a spot on the evening news!  In April of 2011 our town was devastated by an EF4 tornado that ripped through the center of our town.  Each and every person in our city was impacted in some way by this storm.  Since that time many children (and adults) have become very afraid of the weather.  Mr. Scott talked with the children about this and helped them develop their own safety plans and learn what they can do to stay safe during bad weather.

Wild Wacky Weather class with meteorologist Mr. Scott.

There are so many more things we did over the two weeks that I'm sure I have forgotten to write about, but those are just some of the highlights.  It was a great two weeks and I think the kids not only had fun, but I think they learned a lot too!

A Little Bit of Science

First let me say has anyone noticed that this is my 5th blog post for this weekend?!?!?!  So I know that doesn't make up for the lack of blogging over the past few months, but I am gradually marking off some of the items on my never ending list of things to blog about!

Margaret teaches science to our kiddos and she does a FANTASTIC job!  I am always amazed at how she is able to take these advanced concepts and teach them in a way in which 5-7 year olds can understand.  Here are some pictures of what the kids have been doing in science over the past several weeks!

 One activity that the kids loved was painting with air.  Paint was placed on the paper and then the students used straws and air to create a picture.  They turned out really pretty!

While our intern, Ms. Wynne, was with us she taught a unit on seeds and plants.  These next few pictures are activities that Ms. Wynne set up as "shelf work" for the students to do.

bean sorting

labeling the parts of a plant

coloring and naming the parts of a plant

flower grid math game

some of the students planting some seeds

Ms. Wynne reading the kids a book about plants.

These next 2 pictures are from several months ago, but I thought this was a great activity so I wanted to share it with you.  In the fall, the kids learned about states of matter.  During this lesson the kids had a huge bowl of water that they had to place different items in to see if they would sink or float.

So that is a brief overview of what we have been doing in science the past few weeks.  Right now the students are learning about caterpillars.  I need to start writing down all the ways the word caterpillar has been said over the past week.....so far I think my favorite is "calladiller".  Margaret ordered a few dozen caterpillars that will in a few days hopefully change into beautiful butterflies.  In math we are studying about measurement so I'll try and get a few pictures of that as well!