Learning by Heart – Outer Space

 

“The mother’s heart is the child’s classroom.” – Henry Ward Beecher

{M is 5 years old}

Goodness.  It’s been a while since I wrote up one of these posts!  We’ve been “doing school”, but it’s been sort of a haphazard here and there these past few months, and my motivation for writing about it has been null.  I’ve been lazy on many levels since late November… M had the flu, then I had the flu, then there was the first trimester of my pregnancy in all its miserable glory, not to mention Christmas thrown in somewhere along the way… and well, we got a little off track to say the least.  And the house is messy, maybe even dirty – and while I have no desire to actually clean anything up, still I feel guilty blogging when there are so many other things that need doing. :)

Yet here I am.  So I guess I’ve succeeded in pushing down those guilty feelings. ;)

Anyway.  M is totally into outer space these days, which I think happened about this time last year too.  This time he’s all about the planets and the sun.  He reminds us of the little boy in Jerry McGuire, with all the interesting facts he spouts off at random times… “Did you know that if you could go to Jupiter, you’d get instantly squashed flat because it has so much gravity?”  “Did you know that without the sun we’d all be dead and frozen?”  “Did you know that if you could get close to the sun you would instantly burn up and melt?”  I think it’s safe to say he’s entered that phase where the morbid is  utterly fascinating. :)

 

Books:

We read the books in the carousel below.  His favorites were the Magic School Bus – Lost in the Solar System (audio version), and the Cat in the Hat There’s No Place Like Space.

 

I also picked up the video version of the Magic School Bus: which was a big hit!  This was the first time we’ve checked out Magic School Bus items and I have to say I was very impressed with both the video and the book.  I know I’ve heard nothing but good about them, but I’m happy to say they both exceeded my expectations (and I’m very picky when it comes to what M is allowed to watch!).

Most of our learning came from these books and the video.  The rest of what I’ll share was mostly for fun and to feed M’s interest…

 

Sensory:

We made homemade moon sand.  I did not get a good photo of the items used in the sand because M was always so busy playing with them.  They are all either buried in the sand or awaiting their trip to the moon in these photos:

I used a Space Toob: , which was a big hit (and which you can get for a reasonable price at Michael’s if you use one of their 40% off coupons).  I also added in a couple of scoops just for fun and M used a wooden ball for an asteroid.  He really enjoyed having it land on the sand and make craters (his idea!): You could use large rocks for pretend asteroids too, which would be a bit more realistic. 

 

Tan Grams:

We worked together to figure out how to use our wooden tangrams to make a rocket on the fridge:

Science:

M received a telescope for Christmas and we used it to look at the moon one very beautiful full-moon evening.  We also caught sight of a couple of planets (which just looked like big stars with this low-power telescope).  All very exciting stuff!  It was neat to see the craters on the moon enlarged.Shots of the telescope at night didn’t really turn out very well, but here you can see him spying on the neighbors during the day.  Heh.  He said he was looking at a tree, but I’m pretty sure it was the neighbors. :)

M loves a pack of outer space flash cards I picked up at Target a year or two ago.  I pulled out the ones with pictures of the planets, and he decided to line them up in order on our window sill.  He memorized the order of the planets, and I didn’t even know it until I saw him doing this!

I made up some little planet name cards with pictures, laminated them, and he traced their names with a dry-erase marker, then matched them up to the appropriate flash card.  You could just use these to place in order, if you don’t have pretty flashcards. You can download the cards here.

Next, he decided to copy the planet names down in his handy-dandy, never-far-away notebook. :)  (This little notebook is going to be a treasure when he is older!)

 

Crafts:

M made a rocket from a paper towel tube (similar to the one in this post, but not nearly as pretty):He lobbed it around the living room until Daddy came home and made him stop.  I am sooo much more lenient about this sort of thing because busy boy equals resting mama and there’s quite a bit I’ll allow in order to make this happen these days!

We also made little straw rockets to blow around:Wish I could’ve gotten a shot of this in action – I even enjoyed playing with these!  You fold a 2” length of paper in half lengthwise, tape it shut except for about 2” at the end, cut the open end into strips, fold the tip into a point and tape, then insert a straw and blow the rocket into the air.  Very fun! 

 

Linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up.  Check them out for some great homeschooling posts!

Have a beautiful day!
Nicole :)

 

Art Project – Making Paper Beads

Honestly, this was a little project for me – I have wanted to try this since I first found out about paper beads a few years ago.  I was not sure that M would be at all interested, especially since the process includes the possibility of glue touching your fingers (oh the horror!).  But, as it turns out, he LOVES to make paper beads and happily kept at it long after I was finished.

I keep old calendars with pretty photos around just for projects such as this: 

I picked a few pretty pictures and cut them into long triangular strips.  I did not measure these in any way, just eyed them and cut.  The main thing to keep in mind here is that the broad end will be the width of your finished bead, so keep it fairly small.  You could also cut (or tear, for a bit of texture) simple straight strips.  The triangular strips allow you to see colors from the whole piece in the finished bead, though, so we chose to do it this way.

Other supplies:Glue, foam paintbrush, wax paper, toothpicks, styrofoam (or something to poke the toothpicks into), and a thin paintbrush or skewer for rolling.

M picked a strip and began rolling it around the thin paintbrush.  I showed him how to stop once the strip is halfway rolled and paint glue on the rest of it: 

Continue rolling it up, then pop it off the paintbrush and onto a toothpick and stick it in your foam to dry: 

Pretties: 

Once these were dry, I did take them outside and spray a finish on them, just because I happened to have some.  But M continued to make beads, and I did not spray them all (it was way too cold to go out and do it more than once!).  I don’t think we can tell the difference between the finished ones and the unfinished.  If you want to seal them and don’t have a spray finish, you could simply brush another coat of glue on the finished beads.

M was so excited once they were finished and ready for stringing – he got right to work!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Magic Bubble ARt – review

 

Growing Tree Toys recently sent us this fun little kit to use and review. 

We’ve done bubble art before – with dishsoap, water, and food coloring – and truly the fun part of this is the bubble blowing.  So, yes, that’s simple to do at home without a kit; but I noticed that the colors this time, with the kit, turned out to be much more vibrant, and the included crafts were a bonus.

Here’s everything the kit includes:The picture is so very bright it isn’t showing the tons of punch out pieces that came with this.  There are 90 shapes and stickers included, and a little booklet that gives ideas of things to make.

Also included: pipe cleaners, dye, a stir stick, straws, green embroidery thread, paper cups, and a large bottle (much more than we needed) of soap with gold glitter in it. 

I was not sure about the glitter soap, but it did sparkle up the bubbles (as long as we occasionally stirred it), and looked so pretty on the paper after it had dried!  I’m afraid my photos aren’t good enough to show this, but take my word for it – very pretty!

The basic concept is to fill the cups about 1/3 full with water, soap, and dye; then stick in a straw and start blowing bubbles onto the papers and shapes.  This MUST be done over some sort of covering – we used an old towel – because the dye will stain.

M really had so much fun doing this.  I wish the kit had more disposable cups because they got very soggy very quickly, what with the bubbles spilling over the sides, but obviously regular cups could be used also.

Blowing 4 colors of bubbles all at the same time proved to be a lot of fun too: Take a look at that towel – definitely a good thing we used it!  Fingers were stained too, but all in the name of fun, and no worse than when dying Easter eggs.

Now, M would have been content to blow bubbles all day long, but he knew this was a review and very seriously did every single craft included.  In one sitting.  He is a sucker for punching perforated shapes out of cardstock, so I think that had something to do with it. ;)

Here is a look at about half of the bubble prints he made:

 

A few things he crafted from all this colorful goodness…

A crown:

A hot air balloon:

Flowers: 

Stick puppets, a fish, a door hanger, and some pretty patterned paper to use in the future:

As we were doing this (yes, I did get in on a little of the fun too!), I kept thinking about how perfect this would be for a birthday part, or any group of children.  More cups and straws would have to be used, but there is definitely enough soap and dye mixture and paper crafts to make this fun and engaging for a group of 4 to 5 children.

M ended up loving this much more than I anticipated!

Have a beautiful day! :)

*I was provided a free Kid Concoctions’ Magic Bubble Art kit in exchange for writing a review.  This review is entirely my own, honest opinion of the product.

Craft Time - Streamers are Fun!

M came across a roll of crepe paper in my art/craft stash and was fascinated with it.  He made these fun streamers all on his own.  Well, I did have to help a bit with the taping, but the idea was completely his.


You need a roll of crepe paper, craft sticks, and some tape.  Cut 3 (or however many you want) long strips of the crepe paper, hold the ends of them on a craft stick and wrap masking tape around the whole thing until they are secure.  Finished!  Go play!

He made one of these for each member of the family and, I have to admit, they are pretty fun to play with! :)

Here is just how fun…













These are perfect for a breezy spring day!

They would be fun to twirl to music, wouldn’t they?

Have a beautiful, super-fun day! :)

Preschool Craft – Cardboard Tube People

We made these silly and fun little guys a few weeks ago, and they’ve been joining us for meals ever since. :)
M actually inspired this craft by drawing  a face on a cardboard tube and sticking a big pom pom on it’s head.  Alas, that little guy has been lost, but when I found some face stickers at Michael’s I knew exactly what we’d use them for.

Supplies:Glue, pipe cleaners, pencil, buttons, large pom poms, cardboard tubes (toilet paper size), googley eyes, face stickers (or other items to make a face), and construction paper strips cut to half the size of your tubes, and long enough to go all the way around them.

I got the face stickers at Michael’s, but you could also use markers, buttons, and small pom poms for facial features.  We made our large pom poms (for the hair) from yarn. 

Wrap a tube with a piece of construction paper and glue in place:
Add details to the “shirt” with buttons or a marker, and add your facial features:The pencil is lying inside the tube to weight it down so it won’t roll while the face and shirt decorations are added.

Wrap a pipe cleaner around the pencil and slide it off.  This makes it “twirly” (and it’s just fun to do):
Poke holes in the sides of your tube, and stick the pipe cleaners in for arms.  After doing this I realized they would stay in better if we had threaded one long pipe cleaner through both arm holes, then twirled the arms around a pencil.  Our arms kept falling out, so I eventually put a dot of glue on them inside the tube.

Pop on the pom pom hair, and you’ve got some pretty cool tube people:

Give ‘em a snack:        
These guys are so much fun to play with! :)  It is especially hilarious if they run across the table, then lean over to look at the food on your child’s plate, and their “hair” falls out. ;)  Good times!

Have a beautiful and funny day! :)