Our Space Inquiry

My students were fascinated with nocturnal animals and the moon in the fall. They have been talking about it ever since and I just knew that we had to revisit the topic. As we embarked on a journey into space, I gathered space books to share with my students and let them explore. We wrote down our questions and used them as a guide throughout the inquiry.

My students loved this book about space:

This was a great one for inquiry because it was in an ask and answer format. My students loved looking at it to get their questions answered. Below is a picture of the model one of my students made on the light table of the solar system from looking at this book.

Then, she drew and wrote about her model:

My students also really enjoyed learning from the pictures in this book:

We began our inquiry by making a solar system out of black water beads and glow in the dark planets.  My students unanimously decided that we needed black water beads for our background and of course we needed stars. Are stars yellow or white? How could we find our answer? Look in a book of course! My students were shocked to find out that stars can be white, yellow, red, and blue. It is so neat seeing even our youngest kiddos figuring out non-fiction text features through asking and answering questions. When my students learned that the sun was a star, they had so many questions! We made a chart (inspired by Darla Meyers class) to show our new learning about stars. Then, we went back to our solar system and added blue, red, yellow, and white water beads to represent stars.  

Then, we made a large solar system on black butcher paper:

Below is our space small world play that we made out of colored water beads , black water beads,  and small planets.

We were challenged to make our own constellations out of marshmallows and toothpicks.  Their STEM challenge question was: can you make a constellation from marshmallows and toothpicks?  We documented our learning by putting our final product on a piece of paper and glued confetti stars were the marshmallows were and then wrote about it.  

I made a bear in the sky!

We learned about Van Gogh and made pictures inspired by The Starry Night painting. First, we practiced making swirls on aluminum foil.

Then, we made our own pictures inspired by Van Gogh. We used chalk pastels, but if I were to do this again, I would use oil pastels.

Last, we explored the different types of planets. We made craters by dropping pebbles into white play dough to model Mercury. We made volcanos to demonstrate the surface of Venus. And, we blew up a balloon by using baking soda and vinegar to demonstrate that some planets are made of gas and not rock. (Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of these activities).

I hope you found some fun activities to incorporate into your next space unit!
Happy Teaching,

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