Day and Night

I have missed a few school theme posts, and finding it not as easy to navigate from my phone since the Galazy died. New phone is just not as flash. Oh well, so here is our day and night themed week...

I have found the best way to reinforce what we are focusing on is with books as Asher just loves reading. Isn't that incredible, I suppose all young children do but I'm so happy he really really loves books. He can seriously be satisfied with a pile of books for up to an hour, that is amazing. So these little readers I found at the library have almost every pre school theme imaginable and day and night was in there. It was quite long but everyday he would read it and would barely let his brother as much as touch the cover...still working on sharing. The book had great pictures of what animals are awake during the day and the ones awake at night. This was surprisingly helpful as we have possums stomping around on our roof which makes little boy scared, so learning that they are just awake doing their thing (and not monsters) settled ashers fears. I managed to get a book on owls also and he loved reading it to his baby brother.

I set up some black construction paper one morning along with some white chalk and glitter glue pens for him to make his own night time picture. He stayed with this for some time which means success! We also had a turn at a day time picture, drawing birds and trees and garbage trucks, as they come visit sooooo early at our place. Every Wednesday morning the day starts just that little bit earlier as they wake us all up.

Everyday Asher recognised what we had been learning for the week and would say randomly, "we're learning about day and night today"....then one evening before bed he yelled mummy look its the moon! It was huge and very bright and actually out quite early so we got daddy's telescope out to have a look. Silly me couldn't figure out how to work it so it was just a bit of a pretend astronomy lesson :) Asher loved looking as much as he did anyway.

We played with bi carb and vinegar again, little boy loves this activity and he is always there for ages!

At the end of the week I took the boys to the planetarium. It was a pretty cool place, lots of astranaut set ups and pictures of planets and the moon. We watched a brief film on rockets and going into space. There wasn't a lot of serious educating going on, more just running around looking at things, but that was ok.

This has been a fun theme and in the end turned into including space. I'd like to incorporate more specific goals with each theme, although its play school, I would love to see some more focus on things like shapes numbers letters words/reading etc. But I am finding Asher to enjoy each theme I introduce so the more I bog him down with "work" and not play, I think I might loose him. Have to just see how things go.