Seeing Stars

 Every Friday in Kindergarten we learn a classic fairytale, nursery rhyme, or story. We pair these with a STEAM activity to further the learning and add engagement, teamwork, and problem-solving. For Fairytale Friday today, our focus was the nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Most of the students were familiar with this one already so it was fun to hear them all singing along. This was paired with a STEAM activity about stars and constellations. The students learned about star formations and how they create patterns in the sky that you can identify. They also learned about the names of different constellations and how they came to be.

After learning all of the interesting information about stars and constellations, the students were able to make their own scope that you could see a constellation from the end! They learned about what the name of their constellation was, why it was named that, and then created the scope using paper towel tubes, a print-out of the constellations, and a rubberband. They poked holes in the constellation print-out so that when looking at the light through the scope, the holes looked like the stars! This was an engaging and hands-on experience for the Kindergarteners to learn about stars and constellations.