Astronaut Preschool Unit

(Don't mind his bunny face, we'd just been at an Easter event where they had face painting.)

For the last two weeks or so, Lincoln and I have been working on an astronaut preschool unit. The bulk of our lessons we did out of an astronaut preschool pack created by Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations. You can download all of her packs for free at http://homeschoolcreations.com/preschoolpacks.html. I love all her stuff, she's done a really great job putting these together.



I started by searching 3 local libraries for astronaut books. These are the ones I found. We read a different book each day, and afterwards, I had Lincoln answer two questions for me. #1 What was this story about? #2 My favorite part of the story was.... I wrote down his answers as he told them to me. Some days he did better at following the story than others, and I think we need to work on his comprehension of what "favorite" means, but I thought this was a really good exercise. We stapled all his "book reviews" onto the front of our file folder. Every day Linc also practiced writing his name. We stapled these to the front of the folder also. And we cut out and glued all the letters to spell astronaut on the front as well. My favorite book was On the Moon, mostly because of the illustrations, they were beautiful and very life like, and they show angles and view of the world and moon that mostly get left out of kids books. If you don't read any others, read that one.

Inside the folder we glued the pouch to hold all the astronaut vocabulary words. Lincoln's favorite thing to do with these cards was to act out stories with them. He'd take the astronaut, put him on the rocket and blast him off to the moon, then he'd have the astronaut put on his helmet and gloves, then get him out of the rocket, put him on a moon buggy, and have him put a flag into the soil. I thought it was good role playing, even if we were just using cards with pictures on them.

One of Lincoln's favorite games was the shadow matching. You match the astronaut pictures with their shadows.

One of the days we made a rocket (out of a paper towel tube, white and black paper, tin foil, and streamers, pretty easy.) and used the countdown cards (10-1) to blast the rocket into space (aka Lincoln running around the living room at full speed). Also, because I want Linc to be very aware that numbers aren't just arbitrary, but actually have quantity and value, we stuck the corresponding number of star stickers onto each card.

Another day we made an astronaut A out of foam. Lincoln loved this, he even brought it to church with us on Sunday (must've snuck it in the bag while I wasn't looking).

We also sorted rockets by size. To make the game a little more fun and active, I had Linc close his eyes while I hid the rockets all around the room. Then he had to look for them and bring them back and hang them up on the wall according to size. We played three or four times, he couldn't get enough.

There are several tracing activities in the packet, which I decided to laminate so we could use them over and over. One was "help the rocket get to the moon" where Linc had to trace, six different lines. When he started at the rocket, we'd do our countdown from ten, and then he'd yell blast off as he traced the line all the way to the moon. Another tracing activity that I laminated was the begining sound cards. They had a picture and them a word spelled out, but the first letter was dotted to be traced, one card for the capital letter, one for the lowercase. Then the third card had the first letter missing, so Linc had to come up with what letter he was supposed to put in the blank by looking at the picture and saying it out loud to determine the begining sound, and then remember what letter made that sound so he could write it in the blank. This was a little bit challenging for him, but it a really good way. Once he got the hang of it and then it was a fun game for him to try and guess the right letter.

We've had a lot of fun with this preschool pack. And I only mentioned parts of what's in it, so if you are interested in the rest, please go check out the Homeschool Creations website.

I was really happy with the progress I noticed Lincoln making as we worked through this pack. He wasn't previously able to grasp the concept of how to count backward. Now he's a pro at it (at least from 10). He's also come a LONG way on his lower case letter recognition. He isn't perfect at it yet, especially if he's looking at an unfamiliar font, but if he misses it the first time it usually only takes him one or two more tries to get it right. Also, he's starting to have a desire to write the lower case letters. When he's asking me how to write something, he'll say things like, "No, I want to do the small 'a' tell me how to write the small 'a' Mom." And when he writes his name, he goes back and forth between wanting to do it in all caps or in lower case.

And I think the most important thing about this unit, is Lincoln's love for rockets. He's always liked space things (thanks to Buzz), but I feel like now he has some kind of understanding and knowledge about it. He knows what part of the space ship the astronauts sit in. He knows that one of the fuel tanks drops off once all the fuel inside it is used up. He knows what a lunar lander is, and a basic idea of how it works. He knows that astronauts have to wear special suits to be able to breath in space. And lots of other things that he'll tell you about if you ask him. He's excited about rockets, and he's excited about learning about them. And I'm hoping we can keep that up as we move into our next unit.