To wrap up “Out of this World” week, we went to the local planetarium to see “My Planets” this morning. It was geared towards kids ages 3-5, so it was perfect for Anna and a bit young for Carolyn. I think they both enjoyed it, though!
After, we played with all the fun weather, laser, color and space-themed hands-on exhibits.
Jenny sent me a link to glitter dough several weeks ago, and it occurred to me that this would fit in well with this week’s theme. Blue playdough + silver glitter = starry, starry night.
We started with “Berry Blue” flavored Kool-Aid – I used our usual playdough recipe. That seemed a little greenish, so we added “Grape”.
That looked a tiny bit bluer, so I cooked it.
And it turned out to be just about the perfect shade of blue. I dumped a ton of glitter in it and kneaded it for a bit.
The girls had a blast playing with this stuff. And although most of the glitter stayed put, they’re both a little sparkly. They don’t mind one bit!
We didn’t do our art project yesterday, so we did two today!
First up: planets.
My biscuit cutters came in handy tracing circles, and I was inspired by this post to make a couple of ovals for rings. The crescent moons were mostly to use up as much cardstock as possible.
Then we broke out the watercolors. I thought for sure the girls would want to glue bits of tissue paper on the planets, but they were happy to paint. So we painted!
After the planets were dry, we punched holes in them and strung them up with crochet cotton, cut the fish lines off of our stick, and tied the planets in their place.
Now we have an “out of this world” door decoration!
While the planets were drying, we made some UFOs. I cut up an egg carton for the UFO tops, and then used mini cupcake liners for the bottoms.
The girls painted these, and we let them dry with the planets.
When all the bits were dry, we fashioned landing gear from chenille stems by cutting about 2″ from one end, bending it in half, and twisting it with the bottom inch of the remaining stem. Then we stuck the stem up through the mini cupcake liner, then up through the egg carton piece. (I poked a hole in the egg cup first so it wouldn’t tear.)
We wound the remaining stem around bamboo grilling skewers.
And now we have a fleet of UFOs hanging from our kitchen ceiling. (Doesn’t everybody?)
This week’s theme is “Out of this World!” I had found some moon sand on clearance at Target, and thought it sounded like fun (and would be perfect for this theme) so I picked up a two-pack.
The verdict?
Not nearly so much fun as playdough. The girls were pretty “meh” about this (though they were excited at the idea and the packaging) so after a little bit of trying to figure out what on earth we could do with our moon sand – it didn’t stay molded long enough to really build anything out of it – we gave up and went to the playground instead! Now we know why it was on clearance…