Tuesday Teachings - Name Rockets

We did a great activity this week to clarify the letters in our name and also the difference between upper and lowercase letters.

My son's name has 5 letters in it so I cut 10 small squares of construction paper. One square for each upper and lowercase letter of his name. I used two colors so that we could also get in a little pattern sequence. If he got stuck picking a letter, I asked him which color came next in the pattern.

In addition to the squares, I cut out two triangles to be the top of our rocket ships. The letters were written in the squares and then I sorted the squares by color. He did a great job and we currently have it framed and hanging on his bedroom door.

Since we wanted to hang this up, once he had shown me how to spell his name on both the uppercase rocket and the lowercase rocket, we glued down all of the pieces.

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.

Happy Birthday Neil Armstrong!

August the 5th is Neil Armstrong's birthday, so at my house that means: "Space Party"! This year's party is a little bittersweet. After 30 years and 135 shuttle launches, the Space Program has been shut down. The shuttles are going to be on display in Virginia, New York, California and Florida. It would make a great trip for kids to see the actual shuttles that NASA has used for the last 30 years!

Shutting down NASA's Space Shuttle Program does not mean the end of astronauts or space exploration, it will just be different. If you grew up watching the space shuttles though, it is a sad occurrence.

Back to Neil Armstrong's birthday though! We celebrated it last year also and you can see those activities here. Last year's post also has some facts about that first walk upon the surface of the moon.

This year we did new activities. The first one is "Permanent Footprints". If you read last year's post then you know that the footprints that Neil Armstrong made on the moon in 1969 are still there! There is no wind or rain on the moon so footprints last forever. We talked about how to make permanent footprints on Earth and then we tried a few different activities to see what would last forever.

1) Step in water and make footprints. It is very hot here so these footprints lasted less than 5 minutes.
2) Paint our footprints. Since my son knows that I still have all of the hand and foot print activities that he has ever made (they are too adorable to get rid of), he knows that these are permanent to our family. We looked back at some of his footprint crafts and measured his current foot against them to see the growth.
3) We took Model Magic clay and made footprints. He loved doing this and we discussed how we had previously used it to make fossils.

Next we made a Rocket. This was lots of fun! We used a sheet of construction paper to make our rocket.

Fold the paper in half long ways and cut it into two even pieces.

With one piece of paper, trace a circle on one end and fins on the other end (I ended up not using the fins I had cut because they were to big for my rocket.).

Take the top of of your film canister and set the top aside. Roll the paper around your film canister, leaving the open end at the bottom edge of the paper. Tape the paper around the canister to stay.

Now tape your fins on, if you choose to use them.

Now fold your circle into a cone and tape it on.

Congrats, you just built a rocket! Now turn the rocket over and fill the canister about halfway with water. Cut an antacid tablet (like alka-seltzer) in half and drop a half in the water. Put on the top quickly and set on a steady surface. Look for it to fly!

Since I could not get a good picture of the explosion, we took a video instead!