Kids Camp: Space

This past week we did space camp!  Once again, we did activities on a couple of different days since we were pretty busy!

One rainy afternoon, we painted Styrofoam balls to look like planets:

Our finished solar system wasn't very accurate, but the kids love it!  Lane made those "satellites" all by himself during quiet time one day.

The books that we read were The Moon, The Planets, The Sun, and The Stars.  They were easy to read and a good introduction to everything in the solar system.  We also watched a Curious George episode (Rocket Ride) and a silly video called There Goes a Spaceship.  I was really disappointed that I couldn't find any other cool space videos at the York library!  We also checked out some pictures and videos on the NASA website.

Our other craft was Puffy Paint Moons.  It was pretty messy and neither kid really liked using their hands to spread the "paint", so I ended up finishing them both.   Lane really liked the end result though - they are both hanging on our fireplace.

For a snack, we tried the freeze-dried astronaut ice cream that I ordered from Amazon.  I liked it, but the rest of the family thought it was pretty weird!  I also made a snack for the afternoon: marshmallow stars, "planet" Cheerios, and "moon rock" M&Ms.

Later that afternoon, we headed over to my mom's to do our two "games" for space camp: walking on the moon and flying a spaceship.

First, Lane and Katy played in this old spaceship that Bret had when he was little.  It has lots of levers and gadgets to mess around with.

Next, mom had made a "moon" to walk on - a large plastic sheet duct-taped shut and filled with water.  It was really fun!

The water inside felt nice and cool on a hot day and it was really squishy and funny to walk on!  They also had fun throwing "Saturn's rings" around.

The funniest part was when Lane was playing by himself...all of a sudden, the tarp started to slide down the slight hill towards the dog pen.  Lane was crawling as fast as he could to keep from hitting the pen!

Next up: dinosaurs!