Out of this World

This last month of school we are studying space and the planets, Earth's moon and rocks/ minerals.  What fun we've had!  Something I didn't expect to like so much was our little bulletin board.  At the beginning of the school year I just kind of haphazardly set up whatever work we thought we did well.  I really wanted it to be their thing and so they got to choose what work to add to the board.  

Around springtime, we were learning about plants and as it often does, an idea gets pushed around that soon takes root (see what I did there?).  Ava had the idea to make a pretty flower for the board.  Kurt wanted it to be made out of paper plates.  Vance thought was should add seeds to it (we did- we used popcorn kernels for our seeds).  Pretty soon the flower was so big (and a bit hideous) that it soon took over our board.  

Ever since then, whenever we start a new month, all the kids can think about is what we can put on our board.  April's bug unit was no different.  We made birds, butterflies, ladybugs and frogs. We added our anchor charts for the new information we learned about each one.  We even added our own little "Bug Zoo" (made from our fingerprints) like our new favorite book of the same title.

Look closely and you'll see the little lightning bugs have glow in the dark pain on them :)

So when I announced we were starting a space unit, the ideas were "out of this world!" (I'm so punny!) The kids wanted to make huge planets that hung from the ceiling and make the bulletin board a black hole.  Then it turned into making ourselves astronauts (which we did) and having us on the moon- we quickly found however that if we were going to do all the planets, our moon would be too small to stand on- so we settled for Saturn instead!

We researched the planets, and each kid took a few planets to make out of paper.  I loved that they paid close attention to the colors (like that neptune is "ice" blue because it's so cold) and size (Earth and Venus were made from the same circle we traced since they're very close in size).  But my favorite  part has to be that after I put Urunus up, they demanded I take it down and put it on it's side, since it spins sideways.  They made stars and comets and I typed up our facts.  

 

Today we made Solar System hats and they were pretending to be the planets and orbit around each other. They wouldn't hold still for a picture so I told them if they didn't I'd make them stand in the black hole (a tiny spot on the floor that they were all staying far away from).  Then just as I took the picture they began to laugh hysterically...I had unknowingly stepped RIGHT into their black hole without even knowing it.  They thought that was the funniest thing, and still even hours later they still talk about it ("Remember when Mom stepped right in the black hole?!"  "Ya.  She didn't even see it.  It was so funny!")  

Well, at least I got them to hold still and it made for a great picture!  

See what I told you- these kids are Out of this World!