Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Tuesday Teachings - Voyage in to Space

This past Friday we celebrated Neil Armstrong's birthday and my son had so much fun that we decided to learn some more about space.

We made a constellation book to start. I let him make the constellation in any shape that he wanted and then we connected the dots. For this project you will need black construction paper, star stickers and white crayon.

Fold the paper in half, fourths and eighths and cut apart the pieces. Now let them put on the stickers in any design they want.

We also spent that evening outside looking at stars. When we came inside, we talked about the Big Dipper, Little Dipper and the North Star. I forgot to take pictures, be we arranged glow in the dark stars on his walls in the patterns.

Next we worked on the planets in our solar system. We started by doing a couple pages of water color paintings in a variety of colors. Once they had dried, we drew 8 lines with chalk on a piece of black construction paper. We reviewed the planets and the order in which the were from the sun. We talked about how big and hot the sun is and that the planets in order are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. I let me son pick out the colors of each planet and I cut out the shapes from our watercolor paintings. We then glued each planet on a chalk line on our paper. It made me sad to not include Pluto as a planet but no need to confuse him.

The last project that we did was discuss the phases of the moon. We used Oreo cookies as the moon and layed them out on a paper plate. A regular cookie went on the top as the New Moon. Two cookies were pulled apart and half of the cream filling removed from each one. These were each put on teh sides to signify the first quarter moon and the last quarter moon. The full moon was represented by a cookie split in half and the cream filling left intact.

Have fun and get out and explore! Since we had so much fun with this activity, it may continue into another week.

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