We had a fun week of outer space activities! Take a look!
Books
We still aren't visiting the library, but we do have these two terrific outer space books! We read them both several times.
Songs
We watched a couple YouTube videos throughout the week. They were constantly stuck in my head! Very catchy and cute, and Sweet E was always so happy to sing along!
Eight Planets - Mother Goose Club
Zoom Zoom Zoom - The Kiboomers
Shape Hunt
Sweet E loves scavenger hunts! First she completed these free printable tracing sheets from Free Homeschool Deals. Then we went around the house together, searching for items one shape at a time! She had a blast!
For the first shape she chose a marker to trace with, and it came out great!
But for the others she used a coloring pencil, so it is hard to see. She stayed on the lines very well though!
We found some interesting things!
The oval was particularly difficult, but we found a few things that could pass for ovals lol.
Beginning Sounds
I made a quick activity in Photoshop Elements, for Sweet E to practice her beginning sounds. She used her stamps too, which we love to do!
And kitty of course is always nearby.
Space Grid Game
This free printable comes from Stay at Home Educator. We used it with some black gems from the Dollar Tree. We took turns rolling the die, then covering that many stars. The idea is to help the astronaut get all the way to the moon!
This was so fun, and great counting practice.
Moon Craft
I was inspired by the moon craft from A Dab of Glue Will Do, and added another idea from Honey Pot and Little M&M's outer space unit many years ago. First Sweet E splatter painted some stars onto black paper, using watered down white paint.
Then we did another color mixing activity! Sweet E has been loving these recently. We mixed black and white to make a nice, moon grey.
Then she used her hands to cover the entire circle.
And she used some crumpled up foil to add texture to the top of it.
Love how it came out!
Once it had dried, I cut it out. And she glued it onto her black paper with stars.
Two crafts in one! And super cute!
Space Puzzle
After lunch each day Sweet E and I play games, do puzzles, and read books. This week we pulled out an extra hard puzzle since it's in theme. We worked on it together, and she did great!
Glow Bath
We finally tried glowsticks in the bath! Sweet E loved this!!
I also threw in some glow stars and glow rocks, leftover from my childhood actually.
She loved taking the glowstick bracelets apart...
...and then re-attaching them, over and over! At one point she put all of them together!
Read It - Build It - Write It
I had seen similar activities set up for preschool/kindergarten centers at school. First Sweet E picked a letter tile, and told me what it was. Then she'd build it out of star beads. And finally, write it on her white board.
Roll and Cover
One afternoon we were playing games, and Sweet E wanted to use our dice set. So I quickly imagined up a space game we could play. I wrote numbers 1-6 several times on a black sheet of construction paper. Then we took turns rolling the dice, and covering up the numbers we rolled with star beads.
This was actually a very successful game! She loves dice!
With three three's left to cover up on our last round, we completed the whole paper!
Water Beads Sensory Bin + Alphabet Review
This is our classic upper and lowercase alphabet matching activity, but with a bin of water beads to play with! First I wrote lowercase letters on a black piece of paper, and taped it to the tub wall with contact paper over it, sticky-side-up!
Then I wrote the uppercase letters on my old glow in the dark stars, and placed them in a bucket of black water beads. We did this in the tub to prevent these bouncy things from getting all over the house! I also provided some scoopers and a cup.
Since water beads are very wet, I invited her to get into her swimsuit. In the middle of winter, this really excited her! She got right to work!
She did such a great job matching all of her upper/lowercase letters up!
Ta-da!
And of course afterward she wanted to put her feet in the bucket. So fun!
Planet Puzzles
This free printable came from Twitchetts. Super simple puzzles for her, being only two pieces each. But with each match we were able to talk about each planet. She became very familiar with them during the week. The pretty blue/green one is our planet, Earth. The red one is Mars. The one with the rings is Saturn. The biggest one is Jupiter. Etc. I was amazed at how well she caught on.
Gluing the Solar System
Another quick activity, free printable courtesy of Totschooling!
We continued our discussions of outer space, and the planets. With this printable she was able to point out which planet was the hottest, and which was the coldest.
Watercolor Solar System
This was inspired by Toddler at Play. Sweet E loves to use droppers with watercolors! So I glued eight cotton rounds across a black piece of paper, and numbered them. Then we put a yellow "sun" at the front. I also included some addition practice with our craft! First Sweet E counted the stars on a card. The sum told us which planet to color.
When she flipped the card over, it showed which colors to use!
We continued along, one planet at a time.
Two pipettes at once!
She enjoyed this activity, and it came out pretty good too!
Glow Patterns
For one final activity, while Sweet E was rummaging through my craft closet, I came up with glow patterns. We charged up my old glow stars and rocks, then turned off the light, and built patterns!
We did this several times (actually Little M&M joined us too)! They were hard to capture on my phone camera, but here is one pattern we made together.
