Learning About Day and Night in Preschool

Well, despite the fact that I have written nothing on the blog the last few weeks, the Little People and I have been very busy.

The week before last was our week to talk about Day and Night, and that was lots of fun.

This is the sign that I made to put out and show the parents of the Little People  what we're talking about.  You can find a whole set of them for sale in the Teacher's Notebook Store here.

 Out of the whole week, one of the most fun things that we did was to make Shooting Stars.

My inspiration was this post idea from Pinterest from the blog  www.firstgraderatlast.blogspot.com.  (Which is a blog that I really enjoy, by the way.)

Source: firstgraderatlast.blogspot.com via Julie on Pinterest

The author of the blog did this with her first graders and they loved it, so I decided to give it a try with the Little People.  The only change I made was to use something other than the crepe paper.  This is because last year I learned the hard way that crepe/tissue paper + moisture on the ground = big soggy mess, and with the wet weather we were having I didn't want the same thing to happen again.

So I thought for awhile about what I could use that would a)not go soggy in wet weather and b)still fly well and look cool doing it.

I finally came upon the idea of using these plastic tablecloths from the local dollar store.

I got several in some nice "shooting star" colors, and then cut a section of each one into small strips using my paper trimmer:

I ended up cutting them about 1/2" wide, and they were about 24" long.  Just using about a fourth of each tablecloth left me with all kinds of streamers to work with:

I then took them to school to have the kids make the stars as instructed on the blog.  Next time I do this with my kids (and I certainly will do this again) I will allot more time to separate and straighten the streamers.  This took the most amount of time.

However, it was worth the time spent, because the shooting stars flew wonderfully! After everyone made theirs we took them all outside and spent some time throwing them around.

This is an activity that I highly recommend.  In fact, my family at home still tosses my sample around the house any chance we get!