Moments to Remember {the Artist}

His pencil glides along the pages of his journal, smooth and precise.

Focused and intent, he glances between the journal and a book, the inspiration for his latest masterpiece.

I am amazed at how little disturbs him while he sketches in a house full of noise and busyness.  He is quietly focused, a rarity for him.








This is a happy sight for this momma, trying to keep hands busy, and away from the trouble he seems to find.  Or that finds him…

Linking up with Moments to Remember.

Posh Princess Preschool {Astronauts}

 

 

We took a break from Elaina’s regular Letter of the Week curriculum to do a fun unit on Astronauts!

Since the boys have started their Solar System Unit, this seemed the perfect time.  I wasn’t too sure that she would get interested in it, but after I hyped it up a bit, she was really pretty excited!



We started off with The Astronauts Handbook, and read all about what it takes to become an astronaut.  We used the Astronauts Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations for a lot of her activities.



Elaina filled out the title for the book report form, and I filled in the rest with her description of what the book was about.  I love this part to the pack, and believe it helps her remember what we’ve read.



The next thing we did was fill out our Astronaut Schema. 

This was a tool that I had printed for the boys to use, but adapted it for Elaina’s lesson pretty easily.
I just wrote down what she said, and then we used it to tell her daddy what she learned about Astronauts.  She loved sharing that with him!








M for Moon handwriting page...




Letter A for Astronaut: Letter search page.





She used these magnetic counting chips to fill in her A is for Astronaut magnet page.







We went over these cute space vocabulary cards, and then made up some silly stories using them.



We talked about how far away the moon is from the Earth and then measured different distances using her Inchimals.



This was probably her favorite activity of the week: Astronauts to Earth from Mama Jenn.  We used our photo block cube to play it.






She loved doing these clothespin cards from the pack now that she is familiar with most of the letters of the alphabet.

She organized the rockets from smallest to largest, and then numbered them as well.



This is a fun song included in the pack: Climb Aboard The Spaceship.  We practiced counting backwards from 5-1 and 10-1 and then she “flew” the rocket into space.  We did this one over and over again….































Letter tracing vocabulary cards….




And rocket colors…



Here’s a fun spiral notebook for number writing practice and counting.





We used the shadow cards from the pack to play a memory type game.




She won!






The kids and I made these fun star shaped crayons last summer (you can see the tutorial here.)
They were perfect for making a starscape picture!



She made a little Astronaut with a cute poem.  She named him Bud.





We both worked on this Outer Space floor puzzle.




And she played a bunch with the Moon Sensory bin.  (To see more about that click here.)

Overall, it was a great week!  I printed off the Star Wars Preschool Pack too, but we didn’t have a chance to squeeze it in this week.  Maybe we’ll do it for “Ss” week instead….

Moon Sensory Bin

 

 

 

Here’s a fun way for curious little hands to explore the moon! 

Make a moon sensory bin!

Here’s what we used:

Cloud Dough, or you could use Moon Sand 

Outer Space Toob

Floating Magnet Rings

UFO Magnets (couldn't find link)

Scrabble Letters

pebbles or small stones

 

 

Since I’ve never put a sensory bin together before, Elaina wasn’t sure what to think of it at first.

  I gave her permission to play with it however she wanted.

(Within the rules of keeping the cloud dough in the bin, and not eating the cloud dough!)

 

 

These Floating Magnet Rings are pretty fun,

and a great way to teach the concept of gravity.

 

The oblong black magnets are called UFO magnets. 

They are super strong, and make a funny noise when they are close to each other.

Isaac had his hands in the bin the most.  He loves digging and playing in dirt and sand, so this was like having permission to do that inside…

 

Olivia liked playing in it too.  But I kept having to tell her not to eat it!

 

 

Nate liked it the least, and only played with it this one time,

because I was putting it away, and told him it was his only chance.

He didn’t like getting his hands messy or playing with the magnets or toys.

That was really no surprise…