Posted in Creation Study

Update on movies, look below!

We are headed OUT OF THIS WORLD this week, wanna come? . We are going to be learning about the SOLAR SYSTEM that God created, including sun, moon, stars, space, planets...Creation Day 4. I am VERY excited about this unit! Here are a few cool things I have found a long the way for anyone who is going to come along for the adventure. Can you believe God made such a GREAT, BIG world for us to live in! I think about how HUGE all of it is as I look at the sizes and descriptions of the planets, yet He knows how many hairs are on my head and loves me as a child. What a great God we serve!

Good Books:

 The Moon by Melanie Chrismer, a Scholastic Non-Fiction reader. This has some great "beginner" vocabulary for those children who are just beginning their studies on space.

What Makes Day and Night by Franklyn Branley - This is a GREAT introductory book in a SHORT and easily understood format, meaning my 4 and 5 year old can sit through it and understand it. 

Our Stars by Anne Rockwell - Just a simple child's book on stars

Galaxy Getaway by Jane Tassie and Julie Ferris - a MATH book! Fun! Some of these math story/problems are PERFECT for our age group (preschool, K, 1) and some are a little beyond us. But i think the girls will have fun with this one. One example is a martians favorite drink box is in the fridge, it shows how many he drinks in one day, will he have enough for x amount of days. Or, the spaceships on this page have 2 booster engines, count how many there are all together. (counting by 2's)

Exploring Space with an Astronaut by Patricia Murphy - an I Like Science! Book. Answers questions about going to space and shows pictures of lots of different astronauts on each page. This is another one that is great for not being over my kids heads.

The Sun, Our Nearest Star by Franklyn Branley - these books by Franklyn Branley (there is one more I'm waiting on at the library - The Planets in our Solar System) are WONDERFUL for small children, great and fun pictures, easy to understand wording. I really like these!

Find the Constellations by H.A. Rey - same guy who did Curious George! The illustrations in this one look very familiar!  This is not a read-aloud. This I will use to show the kids pictures of different, famous constellations. There are brief descriptions with each one, and it is written for children...so we may read a few of them.

Fun Links and Activities:

*  www.learningpage.com  -- If you haven't joined this site yet, you MUST! It's FREE and the sheets on this site are wonderful! There is a mural for the kids to make of the planets, which we will be doing this week! You print off the planets, which are according to size. The 4 smallest planets fit on 1 page, then Jupiter is so big it takes 4 pieces of paper, you print them all off and color, the we'll be putting ours all up on a wall...somewhere. Also, I printed a few math pages off for Hannah that have solar system pictures on it, but regular math problems according to ability level - I printed off some addition and subtraction for her. For both girls I printed off a few sheets on different planets, with a short list of facts for them to learn.

*  www.enchantedlearning.com --- has a lot of astronomy stuff - a whole coloring book on the planets, etc. I am going to print this one (not sure if anyone can open it, or only members --- http://members.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/activities/coloring/earthmoon.shtml  to show the size of the earth compared to the moon. I also printed off the moon phases from this site.

* http://www.kidsastronomy.com -- This site has some neat resources as well!

*I hope to star gaze several times this week! One of the times I'd like to take our nature journals out with us and try to draw the moon and stars.

*We will be drawing the planets, stars, moon and sun in our creation journals this wek!

Fun Videos:

There are several Magic School Bus videos at our library on space, stars, planets, etc. We got 2 of these to watch next week.

**We also found a kids video made by BIll Nye, the Science Guy, on space! Update: we watched this one today, well part of it...it was pretty much over our heads here at our house! And in case anyone is interested, he does mention "billions of years ago" as well as the big bang theory.

Magic School Bus Gets Lost in Space -

Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System

Magic School Bus Out of This World Update: The girls just LOVE Ms. Frizzle and the gang! this one was another good one for us at our house! Yeah Magic School Bus!

Magic School Bus Takes a Moonwalk

Magic School Bus Sees Stars