Blast Off!

This week's theme for the Smart Summer challenge was outer space.  Right up our alley!  We had a lot of fun with this one, even if I didn't get pictures of all the different activities.  I'm trying to worry more about the "doing" than the "documenting", because sometimes it's the reverse, and that's not always as much fun!

Our local science museum recently remodeled their "Science of Flight" exhibit.  We are members to the museum, and that expense was so worth it!  I can't count how many times we've been there just this summer.  The Munchkin has taken several classes there as well.  This week, he was actually taking a "Pirate Science" class, and one day after it was over, we stayed for a couple hours exploring. 

The Sprout had fun playing with components of the Astronaut Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations.  He loves matching, shadow matching, sorting and the like, and I usually turn the magnet pages into "dot dot paint" pages.  He also made his own rocket!

We went for a "Space Walk" as I called it, walking out the distance between the planets to get an idea of how far apart they from each other.  I got the idea from Life in the Unknown.  I printed out the planets from the Solar System Preschool Pack at 1+1+1=1, laminated them (because I'm addicted to my laminating machine) and off we went.  We should have done this at, oh, say 4 o'clock in the morning instead of 11:30 in the morning because it was already h-o-t.  Still fun though!



I'm standing where the Sun was, and if you can see the 3 year old on the green Gator, he's out near Neptune.

Sprout and I spent an afternoon at the library picking out books.  Ok, I picked out the books and he ran around like a 3 year old.  :)  I also forgot how much I love some of the science shows we get through various sources (Netflix, satellite channels, our own collection).

Books We Read

Space Boy by Leo Landry (Sprout's favorite!)
Astro Bunnies by Christine Loomis
What the Sun Sees; What the Moon Sees by Nancy Tafuri
Shine Moon Shine by David Conway
Look to the Stars by Buzz Aldrin
Spacy Riddles by Katy Hall (a hit with Munchkin!)

Shows We Watched
LeapFrog: Math Adventure to the Moon
Space Buddies
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, the Adventure Begins (yes, we needed to watch that one this week!)
Traveler's Guide to the Planets, several episodes

The Munchkin also found a new app for the iPod that he wanted to play, Puzzle Planets, and he seemed to be having fun with it. 

There were many other activities that I would have loved to fit in (like eating the astronaut ice cream that I forgot I bought!) and since this is a popular topic in our house, I'm sure we'll be doing the rest of them soon!