The Planet Mercury and Packing Tape

Kind of a random title right? But I just wanted to do a PSA about how packing tape can change your life! For real friends. This has been the best discovery of my 10 year preschool career.  I ran out of both scotch and masking tape a few months back and found this packing tape in Mr. Lloyds office. It was love at first rip! It holds stronger and covers so much more area than regular scotch tape. You use less and it costs so much less. It's crafting possibilities are endless. I've been able to tape up our daily lesson and weekly letter posters only once. Normally I have to deal with them falling off a few times before I just give up on the idea of having them displayed. I haven't had any problems with it pealing my paint either. When one of the kids comes to me crying because his page ripped, no prob! I've got it fixed in one swipe! If I was Oprah I would have this stuff on my favorite things show. "You get packing tape! And You get packing tape!" If only I had discovered this earlier. Your Welcome! 

Now on to Mercury! I chose to highlight this planet activity because Mercury was very exciting for our class. There were so many questions asked about hot and cold and we played a couple rounds of good ol' "hot and cold. I sent one of the kids out of the room while we hid the planet Mercury. When he came back in we shouted hot or cold depending on how close or far he was to finding the planet. 

Our Mother Goose Time activity was simple but engaging. The children each painted one circle red for hot and one circle blue for cold. I'm the self proclaimed queen of glitter so of course I had to mix a bunch of glitter into the paint. Planets should sparkle! 

A tip on having a large class all paint at once… We have 2 painting rules. #1 no talking #2 no talking. When these guys get talking they get silly and things that aren't supposed to happen tend to happen. Like painting faces, tables, hands, and clothes. I've seen it all! Being quiet while painting is very soothing. I like to play beautiful nature sounds or as a class we can hum some of our favorite songs together quietly. It's important for me to set the mood to have a good experience with the paint. 

Oh hey look! It's the packing tape again! After Mercury dried I taped the craft stick to the back in one big piece of tape! Since we were running late on time (as usual) I glued them together for the kids instead of having them glue it themselves. Once they were assembled, we danced a hot and cold dance to the Mother Goose Time cd. 

 We ended our day with reading together out of our Look Up books and quick little review of the sight words and, up, and look. I think some of the kids retain the words but I don't do a huge focus on sight words with this group. More on that later...

On an end note… We ended our Blast off to Space unit yesterday with Vowel Rockets. Instead of just making rockets, we used them to practice writing our vowels. I'm so impressed with how well everyone did. All 12 of my kids were able to write each vowel without having to look to remember what the letter looked like. 

I'm excited for our Ocean Theme coming up! I won't be starting it until after spring break. The rest of this week we will be having some Spring and Easter activities along with learning more of the "at family" and "it family" words. I couldn't be more thrilled that we are reading and sounding out words!!!  It is so rewarding to see all the hard work throughout the year pay off!