Astronomy Unit Study List # 1

WOW! There are a ton of resources, even for this age group, on Astronomy! I just got two more emails about books that are in at my library, so this is a first post but I wanted to let you all know what I have found/gathered so far, and my plans.

Book List
Nightly Read Aloud: Maria's Comet by Deborah Hopkinson. This is a beautiful book with an awesome unit available at Homeschoolshare. It is too old for my girls, but I love the illustrations and story, so we are making it a read aloud at bedtime.

Main books we will "Row" (at least right now, this might change with the new library books!):

• Space Boy by Leo Landry
• I am a Star by Jean Marzollo

Supplements (again, this is only the first batch)

• Magic School Bus Takes A Moonwalk Scholastic Reader Level 2
• The Magic School Bus Sees Stars, a Book about Stars
• The Magic School Bus Out of This World
• So That's How the Moon Changes Shape! by Allan Fowler, a Rookie Read-About Science book
• Little Einsteins Galactic Goodnight by Susan Ring

Books we are not using but you might be interested in:

• Round is a Mooncake by Roseanne Thong. The ONLY reason we aren't using this now is because I am also planning a unit on China because DH is traveling there for ten days in a few weeks with his MBA class, and we will do this then! This has a great unit also at HSS
• The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. This also has a great unit at HSS, just a bit older than what we were looking for.
• Goodnight Moon HSS does have a lapbook component on the moon for this book that we will be using, but we already rowed this one and looking for something else at this point.

Videos:

We have many more coming from the library but currently in our possession, we have:

• Magic School Bus Gets Lost
• Backyardigans Martian Adventure (by the way, can I put a plug in for an awesome movie with two of the stars from Backyardigans? August Rush is an amazing family movie that we all LOVE and Uniqua and Tyrone are in this movie!! He he)
• Veggie Tales: Lie from out of this world

Awesome Resources

• Preschool Post has complete Lessons for the Moon here. This includes Bible Activities, crafts, book suggestions, circle time, snack ideas, activities and center suggestions!
• They also have complete Lessons for the Planets here. It has all the same awesome information and suggestions!
• First School has awesome lesson plans and activities for Astronauts. This is what helped me to remember a good idea for Math is to reinforce the circle shape, and a good song and rhyme would be Twinkle Twinkle and Star Light, Star Bright. I got TONS of craft ideas here as well, and they pointed out the online Dora stories and games!
• Dora the Explorer Online Read "Little Star's Wish" and play Star Catching and Space Adventures!
• Dress an Astronaut online activity. A funny side note, you do put a diaper on the astronaut, as apparently that is part of the outfit. Since we have taken steps BACKWARDS in this department, I will not point out that adults wear diapers occasionally, even for good reasons. I will call this her underwear! :-)
• An online book about the Sun
• Usborne-Quicklinks. I found SO much information here! Look under Astronomy and Beginners.
• LearningPage.com has great plans, including a mural that we plan to color and put up!

Ok, so obviously we won't do everything, and even without doing everything we will most likely make this a two week unit, especially considering the awesome books and videos left to be picked up!! But even if we can't use all the resources, I wanted to share them with all of you :-)