Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Aa for Astronaut

The inspiration and most of the resources for Aa for Astronaut came from Spell Outloud and their ABC Themes!

I plan on using several of their units.

Check out our week as astronauts!!!

The Saturday before we began the unit, my hubby and I decided to make M his own Space Station Command Center or Spaceship...whatever his little heart dreamed it to be.  Using my idealistic imagination, partnered with my hubby's ability to execute and create most anything, we came up with this....

















which turned into this.....































We began the unit by reading On The Moon by Anna Milbourne.



We created this TP Tube Astronaut
from DTKL kids after reading the book, and M played with him all week!

Later in the week we made our own flag...covered in "A"s and stuck it in our play-dough moon...just like in the book!














We also read "The Berenstain Bears On The Moon".
 
After reading, we went on a Moon Rock Hunt, just like the bears.  I wrote capital and lowercase "A" on some stones, along with some random other letters.  If the "moon rock" had an "A" written on it, M put them in his moon rock sack!

















Thanks to Making Learning Fun, we completed the Astronaut Do a Dot.

The  Lowercase "a" craft was inspired by Creativity Abounds.  M was over the moon having his picture in the "a" ship!

















M made his own Name Rocket!


















We spent a lot of time exploring and playing in his Astronaut Sensory Tub!














 I used black beans from our food co-op for the ground.  I found glow in the dark stars and the Astronaut bubble jar in the Target $1 Spot!  I also found various space toys around the house. (Buzz Lightyear figurines, a light saber, Little People Construction Balls, stones, Toy Story puzzle pieces...)

We completed a lot of independent activities and games from Spell Outloud's Astronaut Printables.

 One of my favorites was the "5 Little Astronauts" game and puppets.  These can be downloaded from the Spell Outloud link above.  M wanted to sing this EVERY day!

We also completed:
-shadow matching
-pre-writing practice (tracing straight, curved, zig-zag lines)
-letter A tracing

Some days we visited the following websites:
Astronomy for Kids
NASA Kid's Club
Dress Me For Space Game

Let's just say it was a BLAST!!!!

Other Read-A-Loud Resources:
Where Does The Moon Go? by Sidney Rosen
The Magic Moon Machine by Jane Belk Moncure
Astro Bunnies by Christine Loomis
Roaring Rockets by Tony Mitton
Quack! by Arthur Yorinks

2 comments:

Jessica said...

can i just say, "wow!" that is so awesome! you make our days look dull and boring! you are so creative...what a great job! Micah is so lucky! way to go!!

Jess said...

It looks like a lot, but it is over a 2 week period! We don't really do more than 20 min. or so a day! It lets me enjoy the parts of teaching I miss...the planning and teaching!