R is for Rocketships, Rabbits and Rocks

I did the letter R a few weeks ago in preschool, and a mini Rock unit.

I wish it could have been ROCK 101 like Jack Black teaches in School of Rock...but alas, I don't think the other parents would have appreciated it.

We'll start with the Rocks first. I bought a few small ones at the Children's museum, and they looked them over, and we made a list of attributes on the board- clear, swirly, opaque, sandy, etc.

Then we read some rock books about how they are formed.

For snack we made some snack rocks.

Here's sedimentary- or cocoa pebbles and fruity pebbles rice krispies...layered like sedimentary rocks are layered.

For igneous rock, we heated up chocolate chips and sweetened condensced milk until it was "bubbly like lava" and then it cooled into rocks- or chocolate truffle rocks to be more precise.

For metamorphic rock they layered playdough colors, then applied heat and pressure from a rolling pin to make swirls.

This lesson was great....but the kids couldn't pronounce the different types of rocks very well. In the future, I think I'll have them do a show and tell with different types of rocks, or maybe do it in the spring where we can go on a hike and find rocks in the woods or see rocks au natural in the hillside. It was a little over their heads...but might be good for girl or boy scouts groups doing natural history type stuff.

On our R day, we spelled out each letter of the alphabet using a piece of rope. I felt like I could see their brains stretching as they tried to remember each letter than figured out how to make the rope like that rather than just a pencil.

And for our craft we made Rocket ships and rabbit cups. The original idea is here, on bookhoucraftprojects. Basically it's a cup with rubber bands tied across the opening, so they spring off a launcher cup. Check out the tutorial, they're fun and pretty easy. I would reccomend using an exacto knife for the rubber band openings, and some extra tape on hand if the cup splits.

They worked great, were cheap to do, and fun to have fly across the room.

The rabbits and rockets all colored and assembled...

Here the girls are getting ready to launch their rockets

And off they go! The pictures from this were hilarious, because you just see a random cup in the air, like below.

Last but not least there was ribbon dancing. Perfect for little girls.

Hooray for Letter R!