This Outer Space unit was out of this world!
Many thanks to:
Jolanthe for her Astronaut Preschool Pack
Carisa for her Solar System Learning Pack
Totally Tots for lots and lots of other ideas
and the Space Pack from Musings of Me
I divided the two-week unit in the following way:
Monday – Tuesday: Take Off! Rockets and Astronauts
Wednesday: First Stop: The Moon
Thursday: The Moon
Friday: The Sun
Monday – Tuesday: Stars and Constellations
Wednesday – Friday: The Planets
We enjoyed several of NASA’s Our World video clips.
(Vivienne recommends the clip about the astronauts having to exercise in order to prevent muscle atrophy.)
We used many ideas from Eye on the Sky and this NASA site, too.
We also enjoyed The Magic School Bus: The Secrets of Space project pack and read The Magic School Bus Chapter Book: Space Explorers.
You’ll find most (if not all) of these ideas and printables inside of those links.
Build a Rocket Game
We sang “Five Little Astronauts” every morning.
The girls loved poking the astronauts into the Styrofoam moon…. for two weeks… it never grew old!
Spaceship USA (made out of an orange juice bottle!)
ABC Matching
Making Craters!
Oreo Cookie Phases of the Moon
How Big is the Sun? 1 dot = 1 earth
109 dots later…
Conclusion: The Sun is very, very big. We are very, very small.
The girls enjoyed making random constellations and creating myths to explain the shape. (We spent hours with our library books that explained the stories behind the stars. Vivienne, especially, found these fascinating. What a delight to walk out on the front porch at night and find those stories above our heads.)
Of course, the unit wouldn’t be complete without a super-fun sensory tub!
Big hits: 3-D Planets in a Tube and the Safari LTD Space Toob. Everything else I found at our surprisingly-space-focused Dollar Store!
Comments
7 responses to “Outer Space Lesson Plans”
This looks absolutely wonderful. So many hands-on activities to make facts interesting *and* make them stick in their minds. I loved seeing what you did, but I especially loved the Oreos moon phases. Very clever!
The ‘proper’ blog name – Homeschool on the Croft – wont fit into the Name line in the comments, so that’s why I had to vary it!
LOVE all these great ideas! My fav is definitely the oreo moon phases!!! We WILL be using that here!!!
What a fun unit! I especially love the Oreo cookie activity 🙂 I’m so impressed by all the energy you put into teaching your girls!
Love the phases of the moon and also the measuring of the sun!!! How fun!
thank you for sharing those great ideas! I especially love the sun and the constellations! We are currently doing our first unit study (my five year old picks the topic) and we’re having so much fun with it 🙂
Vee
This looks soooo fun! The way you blogged it is also very tidy and organized and inviting. We will be trying some of these, especially the 109 dots…great perspective!