Mars Is Our Favorite Planet!

Instead of something "touchy" for the morning activity, we worked on some letter writing.  We made a chart of all the ABC letters and had each child try to independently copy the letters.  We wanted to see how many letters that they could attempt to write.  They all worked so hard and wanted to take their papers home to show Mommies and Daddies, but we are going to practice some more before we let you guys see!

Today's book was There's Nothing To Do On Mars by Chris Gall.  When Davey Martin's family moves to Mars, he discovers that there's nothing to do--at least until he and his robot dog Polaris learn to seize the spirit of adventure. It's not until they've zipped around the planet on his flying scooter--climbing Martian "trees," digging up "fossils," dancing in Martian rain dances--that they discover a treasure that finally piques Davey's interest--a source of water on the red planet.  The true meaning of the book is to teach kids to be creative and use their imaginations....which we ALWAYS try to encourage!

Science today was a two part experiment.  We have learned some facts this week about the planets..... and the easiest for the kids to remember is that Mars is red!  That means that the ground looks different than our ground on Earth.  We decidiced to see if we could re-create that "redness" and make some Red Mars Sand.  First, we gathered our materials.  We needed some "Earth" sand, which the kids pointed out that we could get at the beach.  To save time.....we just borrowed some from the playground!  That sand is white.  We added water and this new, very scratchy, material called steel wool.  Then.....we waited.  Like all good experiements, this one takes time to work.  By the end of the day, our sand was definitely RED.  The kids weren't so certain about touching it, but it was really cool to look at.  They all agreed that even though we wouldn't want to live on Mars, the red sand would be really cool in the sandbox!

 

We introduced our new ABC game at the end of the day.  Our letters had all fallen off the ABC board and the kids had to help us get them back on the board, in the right order.  Sometimes, they knew exactly where the letters went.....and other times we had to start from the beginning and say our ABC's until we could figure it out!  The kids loved the game and have already asked when we could play again.  It's always great when we can find ways to turn learning practice into something they want to do!