Monday, January 21, 2013

Outer Space for Preschoolers - Part 1

I remember being fascinated by space and planets when I was in elementary school. I can't remember exactly how old I was but I thought an early introduction could be fun for Adrian. He loves looking for the moon in the sky and likes stars and so I thought... why not bring in a bit more astronomy? Needless to say, he won't remember everything but overall, he loved the subject and now talks about the planets as if he'd visited them. :)

Writing in moon dust

It's the first time I have Adrian practice writing in a tray and it was such a success that we'll repeat. I had no idea how fun it would be and how EASY it would be for him to trace letters with his finger. It's a struggle for him to write with a pencil (the pencil grasp still hasn't been mastered) but writing with a finger makes him feel empowered and proud. To make this "moon dust", I used regular table salt, glitter and a drop of green food coloring mixed with blue and red to darken it a bit. Black would have been better to make it grey but I had no black food coloring on hand! *crying* I mixed it all up and it was ready to use. I then would trace a letter and asked Adrian to trace next to me. He got 90% of the alphabet right...For the ones that gave him trouble, I asked him to trace over mine to practice them some more. 

Sweeping "meteors"

Stelline pasta (pasta stars) is not only edible but also pretty cute when you work on shapes and space weeks! Here, a popular Montessori practical life activity involving sweeping on a small scale. Adrian is not fond of cleaning so he didn't quite like this one and even claimed it was difficult. Using the paintbrush, he had to sweep the pasta stars into the taped square. It really gets the little fine motors going! :)

How many stars in this night sky?

Quite simple but still involves quite a bit of math skills and fine motor. Believe me: peeling off these tiny sticker stars from the paper was no small feat and sticking them in the sky gave Adrian his fair share of problems! :) But he liked it. Sticker activities are always fun to him.

Moon Landing Craft

I love how this one turned out, don't you? Wish I had come up with the idea myself! :) I gotta thank Growing in God's Grace for it though and BusyBeeKidsCrafts for the graphics. I liked that the circle was pre-drawn (by me) and that Adrian had to take care to paint (a mix of white tempera and flour) within the circle only. Very simple craft but it was a new medium to use and Adrian had to use proper strength to remain within the lines.

Graphing space related items

Not the prettiest graph but I couldn't get my hands on any other free graph going all the way up to 20. I guess next time I'll just draw one myself! :) Adrian had to compile all the stars, moons, planets, astronauts and space shuttles and register their quantity by coloring the right amount of boxes. I made this graph go by 5 since we'll be starting to tell time soon so I want him to practice counting by 5 a bit.

More astronomy activities coming your way soon...

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I'm linking up to No Time for Flashcards and Discover and Explore Today!


  1. I am so excited to try these in our upcoming space unit!

    1. I am glad. I looked long and large for exciting space activities and couldn't find much that tickled my fancy for Pre-K children so I just brainstormed a bit harder and came up with a good variety that suited our needs and likes.

  2. We are just(still) finishing a home ed project on space. I say just because they always want to know one more thing. I love the tempera and flour moon, we will do that. We did one with pastels to cover their lapbooks but this one is stunning.

    One of their favourite space science activities we did was to go to the beach and through meteors at the moon. I drew big circles in the sand and they collected different sized rocks and pebbles to throw. I gave them a circle in the wet sand, the drier sand and the really dry sand that was more like the moons surface. We took lots of pictures and noted their observations.
    My 5 year old boy was delighted to be encouraged to throw stones, really, he is usually encouraged not to throw stones!!

    They discovered you get different shapes with different size stones and if they threw them from a different direction. It was very simple and it you don't happen to have a beach on hand you could do this in a sand pit or I have seen it done with flour and marbles.

    This sparked an interest in geology which will be our next topic. Thank you.

    1. I'll keep your suggestion in mind next time we hit the playground (it has one of the biggest sandbox I've ever seen). I hadn't thought of that and it so happens I plan on building a "Space camp" week for Adrian this summer since he loved Outer Space week so much. I'm glad you stopped by! Sharing is definitely great! :)