This week was a blast! Literally! We had a crash course in everything related to space.
When the students arrived, they were brought into a separate empty room with just a screen and some white robes. The student took a seat and listened to a urgent message from Captain Burbage a past astronaut. You can hear the message below.
After that the students were asked to get into their space suits and board the spaceship in the hallway. The students hopped right in and prepared for take-off to the International Space Station Training Center. Watch the take-off below.
Once the launch was complete the students entered the classroom which had been transformed into a mission control center and an international space station. The lights were turned off and only the icicle lights were on hanging from the ceiling acting like stars. The room was darker and space music was playing in the background. The students were blown away and so excited to begin. The mission commander gave each astronaut their customized training card they needed to complete in order to go to the rocket launch at the end of the week. Below are pictures of the room before the astronauts got to work.
This week we took a different approach to the learning. There were a number of different centers all around the room and we let the students choose which activities they wanted to do. They all knew and understood their training card needed to be completed before the rocket launch at the end of the week. The students got right to work. They listened to a story about aliens and underpants on the iPad. Then they made their own alien wearing crazy underpants. They also worked on counting stars, putting stars on a star card with simple addition problems, fine motor activity, writing like astronaut by laying under a table, writing sight words in moon dust, figuring out what was magnetic using a feely tank, and many more things. We have a cooking group where we made astronaut pudding and we also used moon shoes! There were QR codes around the room, where students could scan with the iPad and watch what it was like in the space station and other information about space. Below are pictures.
On the last day we had a field trip to the University of Southern Maine Planetarium. We were not quite sure what to expected, but it was great. The students watched, "The Little Star that Could." This was about a little star who was new to the solar system and learned about different stars and planets. As it went on, we learned the star was actually the sun and learned a little about each planet. The planetarium was really neat with the full dome movie and chairs that went way back. We also got to look at the stars in the sky and had to find the big and little dippers and north star. The students were awesome and so excited about the movie.
When we got back, we read a story about space and did a comprehension lesson while they ate their snack and I set up the rocket launch area. Now we tried to launch our rockets the day before but we failed. There were some disappointed students, but it was a good lesson. The engineering team went back to the drawing board, did some additional research and built a new launch pad and tested it out just to be sure. The second attempt was much better and happy students all around. Below are videos of each students rocket launch.
It was an awesome week and will be tough to top. All of the astronauts did a great job and appeared to have a great time.
Next week we are heading in the opposite direction. We are going to hop in our submarine and study life underwater. We have a pretty exciting field trip with a local Lobster man.
Thanks for reading.
