Telescope making

K's obsession with planets continues apace, and my challenge is to come up with a variety of planet-themed activities. As always I'm terribly behind in posting about what we've been doing, but here's one from last month that is very simple if you fancy having a go.

Cover a kitchen roll middle (or 2 toilet roll middles taped together) with foil and decorate...


Fasten a piece of blue cellophane over the end with a rubber band and decorate with little star stickers...

Look through your telescope and see the stars! Making a silly face and wearing a necklace made at preschool are optional...

Not strictly a planet-themed activity, but it went down well. Another option would be to use black paper instead of the cellophane and then prick little holes in it with a pin to create 'stars' of light.

And if you have any bright ideas on how to entertain someone who is only interested in planets, do please let me know!

Building snowflakes

K has been enjoying building felt snowflakes lately. I found this activity at My Montessori Journey (there's a link from there to print out the cards) and printed out the cards myself last winter. I stuck the pictures onto card, carefully cut them out and laminated them... and then got discouraged at the thought of cutting out all those little bits of felt. Oh, and then spring was coming (and a baby), and the moment passed.

So a couple of weeks ago, when the ground was covered in snow, I found the cards again and cut out the felt pieces. You know what? It didn't take half as long as I thought it would. I found an old chocolate box to keep the pieces in, so that each shape could have its own little space and so that K could more easily find the piece he wanted. The brown felt for the background isn't really the best colour, but it was just the right size.

So there you have it. DIY snowflake fuzzy felt. K and I looked at some pictures of real snowflakes on t'Internet and talked about the shapes, especially the hexagon bases. Then we both had a go at copying some of the cards, before making some of our own designs too. Later in the day, the Santa hat (who knows why it was being worn in the first place?) got dropped in the toilet. Never a dull moment with these little monkeys...

Planet of the monkeys?

K is really into the planets, and space in general, at the moment. It was the monthly theme at preschool a while back and I was amazed at the information he retained. As well as remembering all the planets in order (so, already doing better than me...), he regaled us with all kinds of space facts, with probably his favourite being that Jupiter has 16 moons.

I have an old Usborne astronomy book, aimed at children quite a bit bigger than K, and he has spent a lot of time poring over it and reading what he can. From that, and a jigsaw we picked up the other day, he's learnt about dwarf planets, comets and asteroids too. We've also been watching an episode of Wonders of the Solar System each Saturday night as a weekend treat, which H got for Christmas on DVD. It's difficult for K to understand (heck, it's difficult for me to understand at times) but he's enjoying it, and the visuals are fantastic.

The other day, pootling around on the Internet, I found loads of free space-themed worksheets at Learning Page. I printed off kindergarten and first grade level maths, English and science pages and strung them together between card covers. K was so excited and has been telling everyone about his 'space book' and asking me for more pages to add to it.



I also printed out the planet cut-outs, showing all the planets in their relative size. I thought that K could colour them one day and then cut them out and stick them onto a mural the next day, but the combination of K's enthusiasm and an unusually long nap for T meant that we got it all finished just before H got home from work. K was so keen to keep going that he didn't even want to stop for an afternoon snack, a previously unheard-of situation!


I coloured, cut and taped Jupiter and Saturn, and H cut out the stars, but K did the rest. I hadn't got a background prepared when we started, thinking I'd have at least another day to sort something out. In the end, the best I could come up with from what we had in the house was 2 thick paper shopping bags, cut open and taped together. Don't inspect it too closely; one bag is black and one is very dark blue, and the black one had a logo on it in white, which I scribbled over with black crayon. I think it'll do though; it's not really noticeable from a distance and K doesn't mind. In fact, he was jump-up-and-down-shrieking-ly pleased with it :-)

Millions of money!

Unfortunately a gross exaggeration, but 'millions of money!' was K's reaction when we tipped the change pot out onto the table the other day. I loved sorting out change when I was little and I thought that K, with his love of numbers and order, would enjoy it too. Oh, and I also thought that it might keep him occupied and quiet for a little while...

What I didn't realise was that he would insist on turning all the coins the same way up, and lining them up in rows. It all took quite some time...