Sensational Science with Mrs. Grooms' Room!

Hey everyone!  

Are you ready for summer????  I know I am…this girl is ready for a relaxation vacation!!  But we are still working hard on our unit in science…THE SOLAR SYSTEM!!! It is the very last unit that we do in the year and it is one of my favorites…it is OUT OF THIS WORLD!!  (Pun totally intended!)

Here are some things that we are doing to learn all about our wonderful star.

We made suns with beautiful rays and we wrote facts on them.  They are so easy to make and they truly brighten our day! 

Of course, we also LOVE the song by the Storybots!! Our entire first grade is loving the song,  “I'm so Hot!”  Have you heard it?  I just have to sing and dance along with my students!!!  That is probably not so hot.  Ha!

We have also been learning about the moon and some of its amazing facts!  We learned about its landscape, too. We made a model of a moon. It is simply a paper plate, but the kids learn so much about the moon's landscape.  There are craters, mountains, plains, and cracks on the surface of the moon. The kids love to label and draw the landscape of the moon.  (My favorite part is drawing Neil Armstrong’s footprint!)  

Then of course, since rockets and astronauts have also been on the moon, we make sure we have a rocket and an astronaut.  You can find a newer version of the astronaut and rocket here to download for free!!  

To top it off, we have to play their favorite song by the Storybots, of course, and it’s called “It’s My Time to Shine.”  Seriously, click on it and you will be humming this tune all day!!  

We have been tracking the moon phases diligently each day.  My students “oooh” every time they see the new moon phase. It is waxing right now and they LOVE seeing it get bigger. Pretty soon it will wane and our moon will be just a lonely moon or a New Moon.  (They learned that from the Storybots!  Ha!  Not me!!) We draw it and date it on our record sheet.  

We use the app called, “The Moon” to record the phase of the moon that night.
If you would like to use it, you can find it here.  AND it's FREE!!  You can find this particular moon tracker here! 

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It's so much fun learning about the solar system and the fun hasn't ended yet. It has been a BLAST learning about the universe around us!  What are some of your favorite ideas and activities when you teach the solar system?