We usually know little about space. It is something distant and mysterious to us, and apparently, to get there, all it would take would be an hour’s drive straight upward, or so claimed British astronomer Fred Hoyle.
World Space Day, which we celebrated on May 21 and whose main idea is to reach a wide audience and encourage people to learn about and explore the mysteries of space, became a great opportunity for the teachers at Branch No. 3 of the Municipal Public Preschool to spark the preschoolers’ interest in this direction.
The preschoolers prepared for the celebration of this holiday throughout the entire week. They collected many books, atlases, maps and photographs. They expanded their knowledge and vocabulary with words related to the subject. They learned about the planets in our Solar System, found out how a star differs from a planet, learned what the Milky Way is, and became familiar with vehicles enabling space travel and equipment used to study space. They know who an astronomer is and who an astronaut is. Together with their teachers, they made rockets and other spacecraft from cardboard boxes. The group of six-year-olds made a Solar System using balloons covered with pieces of newspaper.
One of the preschool rooms was transformed into a galaxy full of stars, spacecraft, astronauts and green aliens. On that day, some preschoolers even flew to preschool in their own rockets and spaceships. The children, wearing wonderful costumes made by their parents, took part in interesting music-based games and participated in competitions: searching for an alien, building rockets from various blocks, solving riddles, assembling space-themed puzzles and watching a multimedia presentation about the Universe, which summarized the knowledge they had gained throughout the week.
The greatest joy for the preschoolers was the “journey” in a huge rocket made from an enormous box, which could hold as many as 10 people. The event brought the children a great deal of joy and will certainly remain in their memories for a long time, especially since some of them have already caught the space bug.
(information: MPP No. 3 Branch)