Rockets that can really move

We are really enjoying our theme for this week, Stars and Moon. It is great fun to look at the moon and stars, through our magnifying glasses and see how bumpy the surface of the moon is. We were curious about some of the stars being big and some of them being small. We love looking at stars but don’t really understand how they shine in the night sky and why they don’t shine in the blue sky. These are things that are good for us to talk about in class so we will have this discussion tomorrow. We have enjoyed making rockets and today we had a lot of fun

making one that actually moves. We folded a piece of origami paper into a rocket shape. We made a space scene with stars and a moon which we cut out of gold origami paper. We glued a sparkling star shape onto the page as well. We made a small hole in the paper and put a piece of string through the hole. The string was attached to our origami rockets and a button. We can pull the button at the back of our page and can actually make our rocket fly to the moon or just fly around space.

This activity took quite a long time as there were many things for us to

do. We know that the night sky is black and we can see a moon and stars in it. So we understood the activity that we did at the second table. With this activity we learnt about and for some of us who understand the concept of size, we were reinforcing what we already know. We actually spoke about this during our circle time, in order to prepare us, for when we actually did the activity. We each took a large piece of black paper, a medium sized piece of black paper and a small piece of black paper. We then looked at small, medium and large sized stars. We took a few of each of them and pasted them onto the corresponding sized piece of paper e. g. the small stars went on the small piece of paper, the medium sized

stars went on the medium sized piece of paper and the large sized stars went on the large piece of paper. Some of us wrote our names in silver on our page. The small stars were raised so we had to use white glue for them, so we couldn’t take them home today.

We all know the concepts big and small but we were not sure about medium as a size. We all completed our “Tanabata” wishes today and hung them on the tree. Michaela took hers home because she is going to New Zealand tomorrow. We will all take ours home tomorrow. We cut out a square from a piece of paper and then attached them together from one of the corners. We hung these on the bamboo tree as

well, together with our lanterns and our “tanzaku”. We read the story “Papa, please get the moon for me”. This story literally unfolds as pages open dramatically, extending both outward and upward. A little girl called Monica wants to play with the moon, so her Papa sets out to get it for her. It isn't easy to climb all the way to the moon, but he finally succeeds--only to find that the moon is too big to carry home! We noticed in the story that when Monica’s dad went climbed the ladder to the moon, it was round like a ball or a sphere; but it didn’t stay that way. Our new word that we learnt today was “crescent” which is one of the shapes of the moon, at certain times in the month.

We couldn’t go to the park so we spent some time building with the Lego, large stickle bricks and we did some animal puzzles. When we told our teachers that we need to change our calendar, Shelley asked us: “What is a calendar?” Koh chan said: “You change it”. So then Shelley said: “Is it something you can wear, because we change our clothes?” We thought that Shelley knew what a calendar was and we laughed when she said that. Koh then said: “It is paper” and we all pointed to the calendar

on our wall. Of course she was just tricking us, which she often does, as she wants us to think about the words that we are using in our conversations and what they mean; and to use our imaginations and wonder about the world that we live in.

We are looking forward to our last day of Stars and Moon tomorrow and also Hisami’s last day before she heads off for her summer holiday. Thanks for a fun day at school today.

Love always Shelley and Hisami