Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Mercury, Venus, & Valentines!

Hello Purple Room Families,

After exploring the stars, constellations, sun, and moon, it was definitely time to orbit our theme around the planets. Starting in order from the sun, we dove into learning all about Mercury.



We also did a cooking activity of making Oreo pudding and dropping chocolate chips into them from different heights to see the impact of craters on the surface. This applies to understanding lots of moons and planets in our solar system.

Next, we flew our imaginations to Venus. Just the fact that Venus had an atmosphere of poisonous clouds and hundreds of volcanoes brought excitement in our children and they wanted to explore in more detail. These were some of the Venus facts we came up with together included:
- It's the hottest planet (due to the thick atmosphere).
- It's about the same size as Earth, so we're sometimes called "twin planets," even though we're not the same color. Venus is more yellow/rust/brown colored, while Earth is of course blue and green.
- Venus spins the opposite direction from Earth.
- Venus doesn't have a moon.
- Venus has more than 200 volcanoes.
- Venus has craters on its surface.
- Venus has no water and no life. The atmosphere is poisonous sulfuric acid.
- We can see Venus from Earth on some clear nights.



And we also went ahead to create our own three-dimensional planet!




The "space dress up" brought so much creativity and our children talked to each other in character according to their costumes!



They also opened an entire NASA on our rug where they studied and experimented all about being an astronaut and going to space!



With Teacher Rosemary in our science activity, we explored the following:
"Continuing on our space theme, we learned how astronauts sleep in space, eat in space, and even wash their hair in space without gravity. Ask your child what they experienced as a little treat -- yummy astronaut neapolitan ice cream! We also learned about "force" and "thrust" which pushes a rocket or aircraft through the air. To demonstrate thrust, we had balloon rocket races to depict how rockets work. It's all about the air movement -- as the air rushes out of the balloon, it creates a forward motion called thrust. That same thrust is created by the force of burning rocket fuel as it blasts from the rockets engine -- as engines blast down, the rocket goes up! Exciting!!"
- Teacher Rosemary

Rockets!!!
























Trying out astronaut ice cream!






Valentines Day brought the love, cheer, excitement, friendship, and warmth of the relationships we share with each other. We enjoyed our annual book exchange (in lieu of giving cards to each other) and our party which spanned both classrooms.















Keep seeing you all around,

Hugs,
Teacher Rashida