We started our Sky + Space theme by reading Goodnight Moon. Nolan really enjoyed the book, and funny enough, we had never read it to him since we don't own it! We played a game of Moon Rock Throw by tossing some tin foil "Moon Rocks" into our bin. Nolan played this a million times over again and loved it! He was super funny by trying to back up and throw the rocks from a distance... he just kept creeping closer and closer to the basket without really realizing it! Each time he finished, he would dump all the rocks over his head and laugh so hard!
We played a matching game (found here) that he did surprisingly well at. I would point and say the word aloud, and he would find the picture that matched it. There were a few he wasn't familiar with, but after doing it once through, the second time he completely got it on his own.
My favorite project of the week was painting our Moon! We simply mixed some flour in with the color choice of paint that Nolan wanted (red), and painted into the cut out area of contact paper that was stuck to the black construction paper. Nolan used his hands to paint which gave it more texture. We used bottle caps for our craters, and in the end, it came out looking really like the Moon! I love it! It didn't go without our fair share of a temper tantrum though... and luckily we were finished, but at the same time, I was left with this mess to clean up.... Yikes. After a nice little timeout and cool down, we stripped off our contact paper, and, Voila! The moooooon!
To end our first day of the Moon theme, we studied up on the Moon Phases by using Oreos! The adorable printable idea can be found here. This was definitely Nolan's favorite activity of the week, and no, don't worry, I didn't let him eat all of them!
On our second day, we read the story, Earth Space Moon Base, and paired this with a fun glow in the dark activity where we made our own constellations and stars by shining a flashlight through a colander!
We practiced our counting by using the different planets counting printable, and placing star stickers on top of how many each planet's number corresponded to. Nolan can identify his numbers very well, but has a hard time counting out each and knowing when to stop counting based on what number he's looking at, so this was a tough one for him and I had to help him through the whole thing.
We then created our Nebula Jar, which was a total fail! It definitely didn't work for us and just created a mush of cotton and paint and glitter... but Nolan thought it was still pretty sweet, loved shaking it up, and he carried it around the rest of the day! Haha.
Finally, for our third day, we read How to Catch a Star, which was a super cute book and we loved our activities that directly related to the book, as well. After reading the book, we shot off our own straw rockets by blowing into them and shooting them far! Nolan thought this was super fun and liked it better when Mommy did it because it went farther.
Our sensory bin was a huge hit, this week, and Nolan was totally into searching for the matching planet printables we hid inside our bin. He also had letters to find to spell out his name on a moon drawing I quickly made up for him the night before. I simply wrote the matching letters on star stickers with the backing kept on, and he matched them up wonderfully. He played with the sensory bin and researched over and over again for a good 20+ minutes.
Our craft for the day was one that didn't come out so cute, but Nolan still enjoyed it. I created some hot glue stars along with his name on a black piece of construction paper, and he was allowed to decorate how he pleased. He chose some finger painting and glitter, and although it wasn't a very pretty result, he did like feeling the glue with his hands and decorating it to his liking.
No comments