The Sun and Constellations ... Starring Kindergarten!

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about stars! We looked at the Sun as a star, then talked about constellations. We started the week off with our Sun BrainPOP on Monday.

Tuesday, we talked about how the sun makes it's own light and how we can see shadows depending on where the sun is in the sky. The kids made paper plate sun dials to take home and see the different times of the day by looking at the shadows the sun makes a the Earth spins around!

When they were finished, I poked a hole in the middle of their paper plate and they put their popsicle stick in the center. We used flashlights to show how the shadow from the popsicle stick would change directions and look like it was moving, just like the sun would!

Wednesday was the 100th day of school, so we skipped our star study and had a 100th day of school engineering day! Thursday, we were right back at our science work. We talked about constellations and how they are pictures that the stars make when you connect them. I pulled up our sky apps so we could see the different objects in the sky and find some constellations.

{Here is the post with our sky apps}

The kids paired up and walked around the room viewing the different objects in the sky and trying to find constellations and the pictures they made!

Friday, we had a science art day. The kids made their own constellations by putting stickers on a night sky paper and connecting them with markers or crayons.

They each got however many colored star stickers they needed, made their constellations and colored the rest of the picture once they showed me they were finished.

We had a fun week learning about the Sun, stars, and constellations.

Kinder Studies the Moon

Last week we studies the moon! Monday, kinder was still finishing up their rock study, but Tuesday we dove in with our BrainPOP on the Moon.

Wednesday, we looked at how craters are formed on the moon. Each table got a pan of flour (yes it was a messy day!) to act as their moon surface. They took turns picking different balls (which were our meteors) and dropped them on the the surface of the moon to see what kind of craters they would make.

Some of our meteors made large craters. They kids thought it was so cool that we could see the designs of the different meteors on the moon's surface after they collided!

Some craters were much more shallow than others, too!

There were some meteors that made deep craters on the moon's surface.

When we finished our crater lab, we talked about all of the different craters that were made on the moon's surface by the different meteors! We had, wide, narrow, deep and shallow craters. We also talked about the different patterns we say from the meteors when they hit the surface and why that happen. We learned about how scientists, like astronomers, can learn all sorts of things about meteors by the craters they make on the moon!

Thursday, we review the phases of the moon like we talked about in our BrainPOP. The kids used popsicle sticks and black and white play dough to make their own moons! 

One side of the moon was white and the other was black. When we spun the moon around on our stick, we were able to see the different phases that the moon goes through on its path around Earth!

Friday was our art day. The kids decorated astronaut helmets to take home and wear as masks. There were too many kids for us to cut all of the middles out together, so they took them home to do it.

We had a fun (and LONG) week learning about the moon!