"That's one small step for man...one giant leap for..." preschoolers!

The preschoolers have been learning all about space, astronauts, stars and planets in our class!  Since space is a topic that many young children do not have an abundance of knowledge about, we began to discuss something that they are familiar with, a person's job.  In fact, we spent the first week of our space unit discussing what an astronaut must do prior to his/her space journey.  The preschoolers exercised their bodies to make sure that they were healthy for their upcoming trip to space.  They studied books about planets and looked at pictures from space.  Then, we discussed the many the different jobs that an astronaut might have to accomplish on their journey to space.  We read a lot of books about astronauts & even discussed some of the different clothing items that they have to wear in space to protect themselves.  

 

 

 

During the second week of our space unit, we practiced blasting off to space in all kinds of rocket ships.  After blasting off, the preschoolers used their imaginations to go on various journeys to space, including a few trips to the moon.  The preschoolers have really enjoyed dressing up as an astronauts in their special gear which includes a helmet, safety gloves & space boots.

 

 

In Language Experience, we made fruit rockets as well as astronaut pudding.  We talked about the fact that astronauts often take dehyrated food to space because it doesn't weigh as much.  As you can imagine, the rehydrating of food was an exciting experiment for the preschoolers to participate in, even if they didn't enjoy eating the freeze-dried fruit.  However, they sure did enjoy making and eating different flavors of astronaut pudding.  :)

 

During another week, we recreated the first man walking on the moon & then talked about what we thought it would be like to set foot on the moon, today.  The preschoolers especially enjoyed walking & bouncing on the moon as well as collecting moon rocks to take back to Earth.  In the end, the space theme unit has been an exciting and motivating vehicle for learning language through listening and experiences.

Lions and Tigers and Bears...Oh my!

The preschoolers learned so much over the past month about the zoo.  In fact, they learned about all of the animals who live in the zoo as well as the many different kind of employees who work there each day!

We pretended to be zoo keepers and learned how to take care of the animals.  We learned that each animal has a different habitat in the zoo.  We also talked about the importance of cleaning the animal cages, bathing the animals and even feeding them the proper foods.  The preschoolers used a checklist to make sure that they cared for each animal & didn't forget any them.  We learned the words for the animal names as well as many other things surrounding the language around taking care of them.

Sometimes, the preschoolers pretended to be visitors at the zoo.  They purchased tickets to enter the zoo & practiced reading zoo maps to help them get around.  We even bought drinks & snacks to eat when we were hungry or thirsty.   One of the preschoolers' favorite things to do was ride around the zoo to see the animals in open air cages.  Our green jeep took us on many interesting safaris around the zoo.  Of course, we made sure to bring our binoculars and our camera on these jeep rides so that we could see the animals up closer.  This may have been their favorite center so far, this year.  :)