It felt like the end of this school year deserved a good celebration! But I also didn't want to do anything that took too much preparation…prep time being rather a scarce resource around here. So we didn't do anything very fancy. Still, we had a fun time!
One activity we did was building Robot Arms like the one on the International Space Station. (Shown in this video, for example.) The children did this in teams, and there were moments of frustration…but they worked through them.
The parameters we used for this activity are found here (these Design Squad activities are always fun). The goal was to build a robot arm that could lift up a paper cup.
They did it!
The children enjoyed paper marbling so much during our Marbled Jupiter activity that they really wanted to do it again. This time we had three different color schemes to make Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth. (Instructions are here.)
It was definitely a more committed craft project than I'd attempt on a regular day—but this was a celebration day, so…I guess it was worth it. :)
When I found this "Build a cardboard rover" activity I knew we had to try it for the sake of our Rover-loving Teddy. I don't know what it was, but when we learned about the Mars Rovers, he just fell in love. He plays that he is a Rover, and he says he wants to go to Mars and take care of the Rovers when he grows up. He especially loves Curiosity, and still asks me almost daily if Curiosity is still working and going around up on Mars! (So far, the answer is yes!) We are pretty excited to watch the launch of the new Mars Rover in July.
The instructions for this "cardboard rover" are here. (Basically, it's just a rubber-band-powered car, with square "all-terrain" wheels.) It's really simple to make…though somehow walking several children through a project manages to be quite an involved process no matter how simple it is…sigh. Once we had our Rovers assembled they really liked iterating on ways to make them go faster or longer. Hard surfaces worked best!
Daisy made the cutest little mini robot arm to go on her Rover. It was jointed and moved just like our big robot arms!
Here's the robot arm in action!
We made these simple paper rockets, found here at Rising Wonder.
I had the bigger kids help me make these little "jet-packs," just for fun, for the little boys. (We didn't have enough 2-liter bottles for everyone, and we knew the little boys would have the most fun playing with them.) I don't even know where the original idea came from; these were everywhere when I searched "space party ideas." I didn't find written instructions but just looked at a picture and figured it out. Basically, you spray paint two two-liter bottles silver, duct tape them together, glue on some felt "flames," and attach straps like a backpack. Easy. The girls really loved helping spray paint and glue, and then presenting the "surprise" to Ziggy and Teddy with great fanfare!
I found a 9-pack of these planet necklaces for $12 on Amazon, so I ordered them and let the children divide them among themselves. They are really pretty!
I also thought it would be a really fun activity to make planet bracelets like this one. I ended up just ordering a couple because I didn't want to go to the craft store for beads during quarantine. But I still think it would be great to make your own—search for beads to represent each planet, and then string them together on bracelet elastic. Part of the fun is that it just looks like a cute bead bracelet—but YOU would know that it represents our Solar System. Fun!
Picture of the Solar System Goldie drew (I wish you could see all the little details)
Teddy's meticulous solar system. Note Jupiter's Great Red Spot, Saturn's hexagonal storm, and the tiny Mars Rovers (Curiosity and Opportunity) on Mars!
These various activities took us ALL DAY and were actually a lot more work than I was anticipating, interspersed with nursing Gussie and trying to keep the house from falling apart! But on the upside, it did really feel like a Day Of Fun!
After we got all the activities cleaned up, we ended by making mini pizzas for dinner—Jupiter pizzas, of course!
It was actually pretty hard to keep a Jupiter-ish striped-cloud look after the pizza was cooked. Our nice lines of cheese all melted together! Luckily…they tasted great anyway. :)
And I had ordered this astronaut ice cream for dessert!
You call it not *very* fancy.
ReplyDeleteI call it astonishingly fancy! What a celebration!!!!!
I love reading your homeschool blog. I just have to ask, how to do find the time and energy to do all these fun things on top of teaching kids math and reading and taking care of a house and 9 children? I am new to homeschooling and my kids are younger (6, 5, 3, 2, 1 and 9 months pregnant) but we barely get through reading math and handwriting before the house is a disaster and I’m too tired for more messes. I would love to do these fun units like you do but I don’t know how to fit it in with everything else.
ReplyDeleteOh Courtney! I know just how you feel. And your kids are so young!! I promise it will get easier...in some ways, haha...as they get older! It seems like we are doing so much in a post like this, but you have to remember that this was a celebration day and we didn't do ANYTHING else! This was the whole day. (And there were messes galore.) For me it helps to spread things out, and think of hitting goals weekly rather than daily. Definitely when your kids are so young, there is no need to do everything every day! Getting through reading, math, and handwriting is a perfectly acceptable and full day of homeschool. Maybe you could alternate days where you do that, and other days where you cover a fun unit study and skip the workbooks! There's no need for your homeschool to look exactly like a regular school day in public school where the kids move from subject to subject. That's the beauty of customizing school to fit your family's stages! We've reserved Fridays as a field trip day or "life skills" day (cleaning, laundry, yardwork, projects) for years now. Or sometimes it works great to have a craft day where you gear up for messes by skipping the usual daily subjects and focus only on the crafts! Or have a reading day to make some snacks together in the morning and then just read stories together until naptime. Your kids will be fine not hitting every subject every day, and your energy will be more equal to the task of messy crafts (though you honestly *never* have to do messy crafts...haha...you're the boss!) when that's all you have on the agenda for the day. And the day will come when you can assign one child to get out the paints, one child to lay newspaper on the table, and one to put the baby to bed while you put away lunch! And you'll be so happy! :)
DeleteAnd also, you are 9 months pregnant!! This is the perfect time for you to be making popcorn for lunch and having long storytimes with the kids! Good luck with your new baby soon! :)
Thank you this is helpful! I am very much looking forward to the day when the older ones are big enough to help, and taking a day off each week makes it seem more doable. Do you still take summers off or school year round?
DeleteWe've done both. When my kids were younger we liked to do school year-round so we could take breaks at odd times. Plus there are lots of fun activities to do for school in the summertime! But now that I have older kids tied to their own school schedules (and my husband teaches at BYU), we stick a little more closely to a traditional school calendar. And I don't really count our Fridays as being "off" of school--more like, focusing on less-traditional subjects which are still educational. :)
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