Introduction to Astronomy

One of the subjects we are introducing this month is astronomy.  We began by viewing some pictures of the universe.  (There were some great ones that we ordered from Costco's new art gallery. You can see some of them in the background of the next pic.) For us this included a discussion about the creation.  We followed this up by creating our own tiny universes.  The idea for these came from my online course through World Wide Montessori.

 

First they used a syringe to transfer colored water to an old baby food jar.

This was followed by some vegetable oil and glitter.

Blake really liked shaking his.  After we had closed them once they decided to go back and add more glitter.  It was really tricky to get the lids back on once they had gotten oil and glitter on them.  I'd be careful about this if I were to do it again.

It was interesting how differently they turned out.  I think this was because Blake emulsified his with all that shaking. : )

Next I held a little astronaut in my hands and we passed it around.  We discussed the sounds in the word and what an astronaut does.

This little book by Anna Milbourne is a great simple introduction to space.  I found a some lesson ideas meant for a book called Space Boy at HomeSchoolShare.  I thought most of the ideas would work well with this book as well.

We then explored the rest of the contents of our a drawer.  Logan pointed out that this is actually a crocodile and he's right.  Can't pull anything over on a boy who has been taught how to classify reptiles. We'll have to go back and fix that.

This is our alphabet box.  I found the small set of drawers at Target.  The size of the drawers is perfect. We only have 3 different letters out at a time.  Counting Coconuts has some great posts about creating an alphabet box.

We finished the day off with our rainbow letter a.  The boys choose at least five different colors and traced "rainbows" inside their letters.  I'm not sure where my mother found these years ago but I have since found similar letters through a google search.

 Update: Check out our additional astronomy activities.

Check out other great Montessori teaching ideas at the Montessori Monday Linkup!