Blast Off to Space

It's time to learn a bit about outer space! The first time I taught this theme a few years back I was skeptical. I mean, isn't this stuff complicated?  I was afraid the knowledge of planets, gravity, orbits, and all of that space stuff would go waaay over the heads of 4 and 5 year olds. And what do I know about Space? Not much I'm afraid. Before teaching this I couldn't tell you how many moons Jupiter has (63 by the way) or the order of the planets, or what a gas planet was. Pretty much I had forgotten everything I had ever learned on the subject.  Boy was I surprised by how much we all loved it! Not only loved it but actually got it and learned so much. Mother Goose Time  hit the nail on the head with this theme!

This is going to be a really great month of learning and fun! In case any of you missed the calendar, here is our basic schedule for this month. I'll get some pictures up of our activities and projects. But until then at least you know what we are up to this month. Along with all the space fun, I am really going to make a big push on lowercase letter recognition. We are doing great but those tricky lower case p, g, and j letters are still giving some kids a hard time.

Last Wednesday I taught them a little song about the planets that I may have heard once or maybe I came up with it myself (I have no idea). It's to the tune of twinkle twinkle twinkle and it goes like this…

There are 9 planets that we know

Round and round the sun they go

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars

The closets planets to our star

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus too

Neptune, Pluto we won't forget you.

Try singing this at home with your kids! They really love it! Plus it's one of those things they recite to  grandma when she visits. They'll think you have a genius (which of course you do)!