Space Unit for Kindergarten

🚀🌌 Space Unit for Kindergarten: Welcome, adventurous educators, to a cosmic journey through the wonders of space! As kindergarten teachers, you have the incredible power to ignite curiosity, foster imagination, and fuel the dreams of your little astronauts. Get ready to embark on a celestial adventure like no other, where we’ll be blasting off into a universe of knowledge and excitement!

Space Unit for Kindergarten

🌟 Picture this: tiny hands reaching for the stars, wide-eyed wonderment as they gaze at the moon, and endless questions about galaxies far, far away. Today, we invite you to join us as we embark on an intergalactic voyage, exploring the vastness of space with our pint-sized explorers. These are some of the reasons why my favorite week of the whole school year is the Space Unit for Kindergarten.

To start the week, my students jot down pictures of what we THINK. We draw pictures of the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, and stars. This lets me know what my students already KNOW about space. Then, I break this week into 5 days.

The Sun: Day One in the Space Unit for Kindergarten

🪐On day one, we learn about the Sun. I want my students to have an understanding of our big idea for the day, The Sun is a star. To make this idea click, the class makes Suns and we use this big understanding and key phrase in our art.

We talk about how we see the rays from the Sun, but they are not actually there. Moreso, I have mixed feelings about my students using the rays to make their Suns, but overall it is their art and their minds at work. I make sure to point out over and over again how the rays are not actually there in our nonfictional reading.

During our reading centers and group time, we use these Write Me Three boxes to write some facts about the sun. This student wrote:  “The Sun is hot. The Sun is a star. The Sun is up.“

The Moon: Day Two in the Space Unit for Kindergarten

🌠On day two, we discussed the moon. The main idea for this day is that “The moon is a rock.” We take cups of white paint and mix a little bit of black paint to make it gray. I let them mix the colors themselves because they love it. Plus, when kindergarteners DO things, they REMEMBER.

First, we trace circles onto black paper and paint that circle with our gray paint. Finally, we paint it thickly. Then we make craters in thick paint. It looks hard, but we take small suction cups to make the circles. Here is what they look like dry.

We have to take some time to write about what we learned “The moon is a rock. The moon is a sphere.  And the moon is little. “

This student wrote that the moon was little, then a friend next to him said, “The moon isn’t little.” This friend said, “It is little because the Sun is big.” Perspective is everything.

The Earth: Day Three in the Space Unit for Kindergarten

🌎On day three, we talk about Earth. And we make an Earth. But we also have to talk about the other planets. Our big idea for the Earth is that the Earth is our home. We make this art project a circle with blue and green paint inside it, folded in half and smeared.

It is so hard to see all the other planets and their shapes, colors, and sizes from a book, so we have to use the hands-on approach. At our tables, we take planets and arrange them in order from the sun. The shape of the planets is there, so matching the shape to the name is much easier. Then we write the names of the planets using this sheet. You can place these pieces inside a sensory table and that would be super fun.

What are Stars?: Day Three in the Space Unit for Kindergarten

🌠Today we talk more about starts and the patterns they make. My favorite activity is when we make constellations.

And I throw in a How to Make a Star guide since my students never know how to make a star.

Day 5: What Did I Learn?

🚀 At the end of the week, we draw what we KNOW about space on the same sheet we drew what we thought from day one. Check out this I THINK, I KNOW sheet.

{See why that sun drives me insane???} I love this sheet because it shows their learning in a kinder-friendly way. And they love to SEE what they learned too!

 Integrating Art

We also make these rockets…

and make them into book covers for our Space books.

I add pages to the book for each topic we complete, the Sun writing is close to the Sun art, then the moon, then the Earth, etc.

 And I love crossing our themed unit over to other subjects. We used the space theme to write our numbers to 100…

and this is a freebie you can grab and use.

I also added this game this year… We desperately needed to practice sounding out and writing words. This activity was PERFECT for us in Word Work.