Talk about space

written Friday, 29 July 2011

Well it's a beautiful place..." Mother Mother

   Although I did actually have the privilege of seeing Mother Mother play this past weekend at Hillside Festival, this post is not about the pop rockers from BC. It's actually talk about space. 

"But it's so damn cold..." okay, that's enough.

   The last two weeks at little school I decided to base on the kids recent interest in space. They have been talking non-stop about it, so I thought I should put those glow in the dark planets that have been dangling from my ceiling for the past three years to good use. The kids I watch right now are mostly preschool age (hence "little school"), and space is usually something tackled later on in school, but nonetheless, I intend as always to pack as much information in as possible. I made some intense knowledge goals and wanted to see how we did.

   Crazy space goal #1- Recognize each planet, and name it.

   Psychotic space goal #2- Say something special about each planet.

   Totally unattainable space goal #3- Say the planets in order without the pictures (this one I'm sure is just ridiculous to hope of 2, 3, and 4 year olds, but what can I say, I love a challenge).

   This is pretty much a whole new level of developmentally inappropriate. I need to do some major adaptations of this kind of a curriculum for mini kids.

   With the help of National Geographic, Magic School Bus, flash cards, some Kaboose planet colouring sheets I stumbled upon online, and my trusty glow in the dark ceiling decor, we blasted off towards our goals like a space shuttle that jumped the gun on t-minus-one. 

   

   Who would have thought that a two year old could finger-paint the solar system complete with inner and outer planets, sun, asteroid belt, and several space rocks, one of which being the space-rock-formerly-known-as Pluto. We used different sized jars, and bottle lids dipped in paint to form the planets in the proper swirls and colours, and then fingers to add the details, like rings on Saturn, or the big red spot on Jupiter. We also did a colouring scavenger hunt where the kids had to find the planet on the ceiling that matched the one on their page and then colour it the same. They did way better on this one than I expected. We talked about how little room there is on a spaceship, and how things need to be vacuum packed and freeze dried. Since I love being able to work household chores into curriculum, we packed up all of the winter clothes, blankets, and too small baby clothes into vacuum pack storage bags and the kids took turns pressing the button to suck out all the air. Just for fun, I had then turn a huge bin of stuffed animals into a tiny ball. We played "I spy" with all the tiny visible body parts through the bag. "Where is Elmo?" "Who can find Mickey?" "I spy the pink hedgehog!" It didn't take long for my girls to realize that their stuffies were "trapped" and ask (more like beg) to rescue a few favourites.

  

  We played pretend for several hours packed a bunk bed as our space shuttle and then setting off on an eight planet tour, guided by Houston (myself with a funny radio voice). Unfortunately we had a casualty on one of the outer planets. Our class clown astronaut decided to take off his helmet and froze solid (much like Arnold in "The Magic School Bus Gets Lost in Space". Arnold however, just gets a cold rather than dieing). Maybe it was a little cruel to put reality on them there, but science is science, right?

   Some of the special facts got a little changed around.

   "Pluto's not a planet anymore, it exploded and now it's just a space rock." I definitely never said that, but I can see how one could draw a line from "not a planet anymore" to "exploded".

   On a side note, I saw a t-shirt recently that said "When I was your age, Pluto was a planet" and the nerd inside me wants one.

   What's the red spot on Jupiter? "A TOMATO!" apparently. Luckily this was just a mispronounce of tornado, because when I asked her to clarify, she said "A storm, like a big big wind!"

   Today we drew out favourite planets and said why we liked them, as well as creating our own planet and naming it. One of the boys drew a brown circle and named it "Planet". Gotta love originality, I still found it adorable. One of the girls drew a purple and blue planet and named it "Miranda" (I happen to be wearing purple pants and blue hair at the moment, don't judge). There actually is a moon named Miranda, it is Uranus' smallest and closest moon and is named after the character from Shakespeare's "The Tempest", along with Uranus' other moons (Oberon, Titania, Ariel, etc.).

   I think they know more about space right now than any other preschoolers, except maybe the children of NASA employees. However, being preschoolers, they will probably forget all of it by the end of the long weekend. Just in time to study something else I guess.

   Forget object permanence, we need to teach knowledge permanence. Audible sigh...