In celebration of Dr. Seuss week, our Pre-Kindergarten class enjoyed the book “There’s No Place like Space” as well as a few space related activities we had set up to explore around the classroom…
“There’s No Place Like Space” by Tish Rabe is a simple book that explores the solar system in the usual whimsical style of Dr. Seuss. The Cat in the Hat leads the way through space highlighting the planets, sun, moon, and stars as well as other basic concepts my prekindergarten age students found fun and interesting to discuss…
At the end of the book is a terrific glossary of terms that Mr. Hayden used to spark more conversation with the children about space. It always amazes me how much my students already know about these kinds of topics…
After reading the book, Mr. Hayden invited the children to play a simple game to review the names of each planet by listening to the sound of the first letter of each planet then seeing if they might have the name of that planet in their hand. Our students easily recognized the sound of the first letter of each planet as we have been exploring those sounds all throughout the year…
After our game, the children were off to explore the space centers set up around the classroom including creating their own puffy paint universe…
To make our puffy paint, we simply mixed together approximately one tablespoon of glue with one half cup of shave cream then added a good squeeze of liquid tempera paint to make the glue and shave cream mixtures bright colors for the children to work with…
The children began their universe by drawing circles or stars on their cardboard canvases. Then the children used a spoon to add color and texture to each of their planets or stars…
Once the children completed their universe, they gave each of their planets a name. Some of the children chose to give their planets names based on the real planets they learned about in our book while other planets were named after friends or were inspired by the color or shapes of the planets they had made…
Every universe was uniquely designed and one of the best parts of this experience was listening to the children’s conversations they had with each other about the planets along the way…
The puffy paint needs to dry overnight and after it is dry, it feels kind of like plastic. Puffy paint is one of our favorite mediums to create with.
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