Space Week!! - Part 1

It's was my Birthday week this week, and my partner Georgia has taken the week off work (she works very long days) to be at home with me, unfortunately I was not able to have time off too but I'm planning as much fun as possible with the children so she'll never want to go back to work!

Recently I bought a little 99p book about space and the solar system from a local shop, just because I saw it and thought we didn't really have anything spacey yet! So it was a bit of a surprise when the kids found it and just fell in love with it!
It got to a point in fact that it was comming out everyday and I was being asked questions about the planets and the sun, 'can we go there can we go there?', and was having to sort out squables out about who had it first and whos turn it was!

So following the childrens interests I decided to devote the week to all things SPACE!!

We started off with making some tissue paper laminated planets, 'C' wanted to make the Sun and Earth, and 'I' wanted blues and greens so we made them Neptune and Uranus. These planets became the base to my new window display which was a wok in progress through the week. The children were fascinated watching the sheets go through the laminator and were asking all about how it works!

Next up, was making some of our very own spaceships! I just happened to have a couple of boxes around the house, we drew on the basic spaceship design and then handed them over for the finishing touches!

Once they were all decorated we were ready for a space race around the garden, on your marks....

After that spurt of energy we came back inside to have a look what else there was to do!

I had been getting some ideas together from other blogs on a space sensory tub, mine consists of black eyed beans, marbles, some glow in the dark stars, some pots and scoops for pouring practice, some jigsaw pieces and a globe to have a look at where we are. Theres also a jigsaw book, a 'Pepper Pig' space rocket and the solar system book which started it all off!!
Both 'C' and 'I' had a fantastic time looking through all these bits. 'C' is a bit older and got straight into the jigsaws as he does love a good puzzle, 'I' at just 2 years old was fascinated by the little stars and pots I had put in there and spent ages scooping the beans and digging around.

We finished the day by cooking some 'Planet Cookies' and 'C' spent some time practicing his writing, asking for spacey words which we dot out first. We also had a look on YouTube and found some footage of some real spaceships taking off.

By the end of day one I was very tired and the children were very excited about what I had in mind for the next day!!