Preschool ~ Solar System

Preschool ~ Solar System

This is our first official preschool unit. Now that Smiley is 3 and we have started to do more theme/project-based learning, I decided to link up to preschool corner to see what other preschoolers are up to :)

Over the past couple of weeks, Smiley has learned about the Solar System. He has asked me so many questions about the moon, sun and planets that I decided it was time to cover the topic a bit more in depth.

We made a collage on his bedroom wall with the sun and the eight planets. I found the images through google images, printed them on card stock, and used poster tags to attach them to dark blue colored paper. I wrote the name of the planets underneath. We learned the names and a couple important facts about each planet. Smiley learned the information very quickly and has been extremely enthusiastic about this theme. I guess it's a good thing that I followed his lead in choosing a topic :)

We have been reading lots of books about the solar system, including:
- There's no place like Space (The Cat in the Hat's Learning Library)
- Our Home Planet Earth by Nancy Loewen
- Stories of the Sun: The Planets by Clint Twist
- The Sun by Ron Miller

We explored several space related sites on the internet. Some of our favorites are: Kids Astronomy and NASA Kids.

We also took a field trip to the Kids Discovery Center. Lots of fun!

Math Skills:
We worked on different patterns with our little magnets. After a while, Smiley turned the patterns into a race track. The boy loves anything car-related :)

 We did different activities with our animal critters. We sorted them by size and shape and made different patterns with them.

We have been working a lot with puzzles lately. He put this puzzle together in no time. I am impressed how much his puzzle skills have improved lately.