Space and Planets Interactive Notebook

Going on a few years of doing our Space and Planets theme and it seems like we revamp it every year to make things go a bit smoother.  This year we are going to try doing an interactive notebook where students have to assemble one fact for each of the planets after we learn about it and brainstorm facts they remember.  We are hoping this will help learning one main fact about each planet a little easier for first graders to remember as they do the final project at the end of the unit (where they match the fact to the planet as they put together a Solar System display).

If you are interested in this interactive notebook, you can find it HERE at my TPT store.

How to Use this Book:After reading your favorite read aloud book about space, stars, the sun, each planet, watching videos about space concepts, and brainstorming facts they remember, have your students piece together the fact for each space word. Then have them color the black line illustrations to match the colors of each of the planets and other pictures. The sentences included in this interactive notebook are the exact sentences that are used with my Space and Planets Cut Apart Sentences.  So if you liked those sentences, but you wanted it put together as a book, here is your thing!  I have also included optional pages on how many planets there are.  Some people like to still teach that Pluto is a "planet", but a dwarf planet.  And other people like to just say there are only 8 planets.

How to Assemble:Copy single sided or double sided and staple on the left hand size. Copy the words that will be glued in the book separately. There are three on each page. Only hand out the sentence your students need.

Answer Key:Solar System: There are nine planets in the solar system.
Solar System: There are eight planets in the solar system.
Sun: The nine planets orbit around the sun.
Sun: The eightplanets orbit around the sun.
Star: A constellation is a group of stars that make a shape.
Mercury: Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.
Venus: Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system.
Earth: Earth is the only planet that animals can live.
Mars: Mars is called the red planet.
Jupiter: Jupiter has a giant red spot that is a storm.
Saturn: Saturn’s rings are made of rock and ice.
Uranus: Uranus spins around on its side.
Neptune: Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun.
Pluto: Pluto is called a dwarf planet.
Earth’s Moon: An astronaut has been to the moon.
Comet: A comet is made of ice, dust, and rock.
Astronaut: An astronaut wears a special suit to travel in space.
Asteroid: Asteroids are rocks that orbit the sun.

Space and Planets Review Packet

We will be finishing up our Space and Planets theme this week after taking time to learn many different facts about each planet.  Friday of this week, students will be making their own solar system mural.  They have to put the planets in order and place the fact next to each planet on the mural.  They have lots of fun with it.
To help get ready for this, I created this Space and Planets Review Packet:

You can find this HERE at my TPT store.

Space and Planets Writing Retell Sheets, 3 options available:

• Students write sentences to match the pictures
• Students write the missing planet name in the shape box font.--Student traces the planet name within the sentence.

Planets Fact Cards: BW and Color Options

• Print, laminate, and cut out to use as pocket chart cards or review for learning 1 fact about each planet.
• Use the black and white version to create a mini-book.

Label the Vocabulary Word:

• Students match the picture with the word from the word wall.

Space "I Have Who Has" Game

This must be my favorite time of year to teach Social Studies and Science because my brain goes crazy as I'm teaching it coming up with news things to make!  Last night I put together an "I Have Who Has" game for the Space theme we just got done with.  I guess I'll use it next year or possibly as a filler for a review if we have down time...Which makes me think about making one for our current Continents and Ocean theme.

You can find this HERE at my TPT store. It includes all the words include in my Space and Planets Word Wall card set that I also have available at my store.

Planets Mini Books: 9 Emergent Readers

This week we start our Space and Planets theme.  After planning out our first week, I decided I wanted to write some easy readers for my first graders about each of the planets.  Thankful for a snow day today so that I could complete them.  We plan to do a read-aloud for each of the planets and have students write a fact or two about each of the planets in their Planets Fact book.  I wanted to add one more piece to this by having the students do some reading after we have done the read aloud with them at the carpet, but before we have them write the facts in their own words.  I tried to include as many picture clues as I could using my clip art illustrations that would help students as they read independently or in partners.  We will see how it goes this year. 

Another new piece is a mimio file that one of my co-workers put together where we can type some facts for a visual as we discuss the characteristics of each planet.  She included some neat photographs of each planet, and then I added a planets fact generator sheet that we could use to review some key points by filling in the blanks.  I included a word bank to choose from. 

You can find this set of readers HERE at my TPT store.

Space and Planets Songs

It's Friday night and I'm sitting under the covers in my PJs with the laptop on my lap writing songs about the planets!  Sounds fun to you, doesn't it?  I think my husband thinks I'm a little looney because he just came in here asking what the H#CK I was doing.  I asked him if he wanted to help me come up with the lyrics, but he said, "Nope, I'll leave that up to you!"

Well, I just finished up this 9 poster set of songs for all the planets.  Last spring my co-teachers and I came up with some songs for the different habitats while we were at a the Beginning Reading Conference in Cedar Falls, IA, and our students just LOVED singing them.  I wanted something like it for our Space and Planets unit.

You can purchase this set at my TPT store HERE.

Space and Planets Mini Book

I created this mini book today after I got to thinking how soon our Space and Planets unit is coming.  One more week of Dr. Seuss and then we have a two week study of space and the planets.  We purchased a ton of read aloud books for our unit last year, but don't really have any books that the whole class can do as a shared read or for a guided reading group.

There are 9 planets.
The 9 planets orbit the sun.
The sun is the center
Mercury is closest to the sun.
Venus is the hottest planet.
Earth is the only planet with animals.
Mars is called the red planet.
Jupiter has a giant red spot. It is a storm.
Saturn's rings are made of rock and ice.
Uranus spins around on its side.
Neptune is the 8th planet from the sun.
Pluto is a dwarf planet.
Astronomers use a telescope to study the stars and planets.
A constellation is a group of stars that make a shape.
An astronaut wears a special suit to keep him safe in space.
If you already have my Space and Planets Cut Apart sentences, this is a great book to go along with it!

You can find this mini-book HERE at my TPT store.

Space and Planets Cut Apart Sentences

Does it drive you nuts when you are in the middle of teaching a lesson and an idea pops in your head about something completely different...and you can't act upon that new idea until your lesson is done and the kids go to recess? Then you get paranoid during that lesson that you are going to forget all the new ideas that run through your brain? So your lesson plan book becomes sticky note haven...until you have time to sit down and do it?  Well, that was tonight while watching Grey's Anatomy.

This morning while making cute little Valentine bouquets with the kids to give their mom and dads, I started thinking ahead to two themes from now: Space and Planets. I have been updating our cut apart sentences all year and realized I need to get ahead on those so that I am not making them as I need them. Then I decided it would be an awesome idea to have a cut apart sentences about each of the planets that tell one important thing about each planet. These cut aparts have worked great for morning work as well as must do activities during Guided reading.  Well, I ended up coming up with a TON of fun sentences to use throughout the unit.

Then that led to me to thinking about our Continents and Oceans unit and creating a sentence for each of the continents and oceans, which then led me to come up with ideas for the different habitats for our Animal Habitats theme.  Look for post about those when I get them done. 

It's a good thing we have Friday and Monday off for Winter Vacation so I can be home and will have time to get those things done before it drives me nuts that they aren't done!

Sentences included in my Space and Planets set:

• There are nine planets in the solar system.
• The nine planets orbit around the sun.
• The sun is a star in our solar system.
• Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.
• Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system.
• Earth is the only planet that animals can live.
• Mars is called the red planet.
• Jupiter has a giant red spot that is a storm.
• Saturn’s rings are made from rock and ice.
• Uranus spins around on its side.
• Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun.
• Pluto is called a dwarf planet.
• An astronomer uses a telescope to study the stars.
• An astronaut wears a special suit to travel in space.
• A constellation is a group of stars that make a shape.

You can find the Space and Planets Cut Apart sentences set HERE at my TPT store.

Space Word Wall Vocabulary Cards

 

I noticed someone on the TPT site requested space vocabulary cards and thought, "I could probably whip some of those up."  We do already have some word wall cards in our classroom that we found on the K-3 Teachers Resources site, but our school is switching reading/language arts series and PROBABLY going away from D'Nealian.  So making new ones would probably be good anyway. 

Our students LOVE using the word wall pocket chart during their writing.  It helps give them "ideas" to write about and gives them a chance to SEE new words.  Our hope is that it will increase their reading vocabulary.  We noticed this year on our Gates word decoding tests, that words that we included on our word wall pocket chart for theme, student got right!  (Example:  During our Weather theme we had the word card for "lightning" and as a whole students actually got that question correct more than they have in the past.)  So if the focus is on vocabulary to increase comprehension, making these little word wall cards is way worth it!  And I love doing it anyway...

You can purchase this at our TPT store HERE.  The Space Doodles clip art used to created these word wall cards is also available for purchase:

Clip Art by Carrie on Teacher's Notebook: HERE (immediate download)

Clip Art by Carrie on Etsy: HERE (zip file emailed to you by Carrie)

Clip Art by Carrie at our TPT store: HERE (immediate download)

We would love your feedback...and let us know if you have any requests!

"My Space Book: What I Learned"

This year we created a "My Planets Book" that our first graders used during journal writing to record what they learned about each planet.  After listening to different books about the planets, we had them write the facts they remembered and also draw a picture of each planet.  We wrote the facts down on sticky notes and displayed them on a planets anchor chart.  Sometimes we had them write their own facts independently using the fact journal sheets first and other times we had them generate the facts together as a class first and the teacher wrote them on the sticky notes.

Here is a picture of the pretty basic page we whipped up during our Space unit.  The kids drew a picture of the planets at the bottom and wrote on the top.  (All the planets pretty much looked alike...so knew I wanted to revamp so they took a little more time with coloring it how the planet actually looked.)

I decided to use my Space Doodles clip art and revamp it into a "My Space Book:  What I Learned" so that students have a place to record everything they learned throughout the unit.  This year, we kept the fact generating to just the planets, but next year we hope to discuss and respond about other things they learned about space.  My son came home with his "Planets Book" and had to read to me all the things he learned about in Christine's class.  So...I thought...if he loved it so much, why not extend their learning a bit and dig a little deeper into other space concepts?

Here is the updated version in our "My Space Book".  Now students will focus on writing the facts and then color the planet to match its colors they see on the covers of the planets read aloud books we use.

The "My Space Book:  What I Learned" book includes facts sheets for:  Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Sun, moon, star, galaxy, universe, astronaut, astronomer, solar system, asteroid, and comet.

If you'd like to purchase this book you can find it at our TPT store HERE.

Here is the "My Space Book:  What I Learned" book:

If you'd like to puchase the Space Doodles clip art you can find it at our TPT store, Carrie's Etsy shop, or Clip Art by Carrie on Teacher's Notebook.

Here is the cover of the Pebble Plus book "Mercury" that we read aloud to students. It is an awesome series of books that teaches about each planet in "first grade language".

Space Doodles and FREEBIE Astronaut

Christine and I are working on revamping some of our Space/Planet projects and we needed some space art, so this week I've been busy doodling all the things we needed.  Wasn't so sure how to draw a "galaxy" or the "universe", but I was thinking galaxy within universe...let me know what you think of my interpretation.  All 24 images are BW and full-color PNG files so they are perfect for layering in projects or mini-books that you want to create for your classroom.  Here is the Space Doodles clip art set I came up with:

And I promised a freebie, so here is my astronaut:

You can purchase this Space Doodles clip art at:
Teacher's Notebook gallery:  Clip Art by Carrie (immediate download)
Our TPT Store:  Space Doodles (immediate download)
Etsy Shop:  Clip Art by Carrie (emailed to you by me)

See terms of use below for use of my clip art.  I would love to see some of the things you create with my art, so post a comment with a link so we can check it out at your blog!

~~Carrie