Space

Spring Break Day 1: Space

Resources: Nasa's Space Place, and Kaboose

Make it a total of four boys, since things aren't as fun without a buddy to join in.

When our friend arrived, we started with making a Starfinder. They did this activity for all of 10 minutes before moving on. Not much learning there.
Next, we did a mosaic space robot puzzle, that can be put together 200+ different ways...all of them the wrong way, except one! This kept their interest for a while, but after not being able to complete the puzzle, they gave up. Strike two.
We moved onto making aliens from playdough, which was a huge success, especially for my one year old who adores playdough, and anyone who will sit beside him and create with him. All four boys were able to create some neat looking creatures.
After wash up, I let them have some free time. They wanted so badly to play the Wii, but I reminded them it was Space Day. Instead of playing Star Wars on the Wii, they became the Jedi warriors and had their own light saber fight in the basement. Each one had a flashlight, and a blanket for a cape...they turned off the lights and all I heard were light saber noises for the next 30 minutes. That gave me time to clean up the playdough mess, and prep for lunch.
For lunch, we made our own asteroids to eat out of mashed potatoes. It was fun making them (and looking at all the pictures of real asteroids), but the kids were not interested in actually eating them, so we also made personal pizza pockets (they thought it was the perfect astronaut food, so while they were in space, the food would not fly around) and strawberry milkshakes, with a lid and straw of course..comment of the day...

"My mom makes the best milkshakes. They are healthy and we don't even care."

After lunch...and since the chalkboard wall is right beside the table...the boys started creating a space mural. We have different coloured chalk which came in very handy, and so I traced each boy on the wall, and they drew themselves as...what else...a star wars character...I think all of them were Darth Vader! They did a great job, and even added some of the planets, not the ones from our solar system, but Naboo, Tatooine, Cameno and Mustafar...the really important ones.

I told the boys that all astronauts need to be in good physical shape for missions. This gave them an opportunity for some screen time...Sports Resort, of course. They did an incredible job playing together, while I put the little one down for a nap.
During nap time, I showed them why stars twinkle, and we talked about what stars really look like (the sun). The older boys already knew this information, but it was new to the 5 year old..so I let them teach him a thing or two about our solar system. I was so proud of all the facts they actually knew.
Time flew by, and it was time to say goodbye to our friend.
Once he was gone, we got to some more lessons. We read some books about space, and then I quizzed Zach on some of the words, while Tyler worked on his alphabet. Once they were done writing, I challenged them to make the words look like things they would see in space. I read some more books, since they seemed to need some quiet time, and then they worked on building Lego space stations while I cleaned up.
We were going to build a rocket, but never got around to it. Oh well, we can use all that cardboard for something later on....