Space, Planets, & Astronauts

One of my favorite things to learn about when I was little was outer space! I grew up southeast of Houston, TX & NASA was just amazing to me! I remember getting to watch the 1st teacher go to space, but unfortunately I ended up seeing the Challenger explode & not quite understanding why it disappeared. Looking at pictures & videos of the universe completely solidifies my belief in the one true God! Just with His word He spoke it all into existence is completely awe inspiring!

Many of the items we used this week came from Homeschool Creations, 1+1+1=1, Making Learning Fun, Spell Outloud, & of course our awesome resource center! Please check out these amazing sites to find all of these amazing printables!

Our Bible Verse was Psalm 148:3 "Praise Him sun & moon. Praise Him all you shining stars."





We went over the days of creation that God created light, earth, & all of the universe. I was pleasantly surprised by how much Brady remembered! Here are the books we read together this week.
I HIGHLY recommend 8 Spinning Planets! Both of the boys read this one multiple times! Rylan can even look at this book & tell me which planets are which, which are hot, which are cold, etc.

For Brady's handwriting practice we used printables from the many sites I listed earlier & he wrote space-themed words & his Bible verse. Rylan also used the printables to practice tracing different kinds of lines.


Making Learning Fun has magnet pages for their space theme. I chose A is for Astronaut & 1st had Rylan cover the dots with the magnetic pom poms I made, then he & Brady both used Do-A-Dot Markers to cover them. I use this as a pre-writing skill for Rylan & Brady just thinks it's fun!


Brady practiced his beginning sounds by saying the name of the picture on the card then circling the correct letter. He practiced ordering things 1st-8th by lining up the planets each day. This helped him remember their order as well!




All of his vocabulary words this week were space words of course. He practiced by matching the word to its correct picture 1st, then he had to tell me what that picture was & answer some other questions about it.

He also had to sort pictures by whether they were planets or not & he practiced counting by 2s by using a printable from Making Learning Fun.


Rylan enjoyed playing with the cut-outs of the planets & making them orbit :) We briefly talked about constellations & had I really cool activity we got from the resource center. They had cards with various constellations printed on each one that you could shine a flashlight behind & see the constellation on the wall. I think we may continue to play with this so when we go camping we can try to find some.



We checked out moon shoes from the resource center so the boys could pretend they were astronauts walking on the moon. I must admit there were MANY accidents on them, but they LOVED them nonetheless!

Rylan worked on a space puzzle & playing with a magnetic playset to work on his motor skills. Many of the magnetic pieces were small, but he did great moving them around & creating a picture. It was also a good way to teach him the names of the pictures too. Example: moon buggy, satellite, space station, comet, asteroid, etc.

He also practiced his colors, counting down from 10 to make his rockets blast off, & matching pictures to their shadows.

The boys played with stick puppets I printed from Spell Outloud & acted out a cute poem we found on there! You MUST check it out! I also made 2 sensory bins. One had moon sand, 2 small astronauts, a flag, small earth & moon, rocks I found outside, mini glow in the dark stars, various sizes of Styrofoam balls to pretend they were planets, meteors, or asteroids. The other had moon dough with glow in the dark stars, comets, planets, Styrofoam balls, & rocks too. They played with them EVERYDAY for a LONG time! :)

At the end of the week I had the boys try freeze-dried ice cream just like the REAL astronauts ate in space. As you can see Rylan didn't like it at 1st, but then they both devoured it! We also watch videos of real space shuttles taking off, traveling in space, walking on the moon, & much more!

I am so glad these fabulous ladies share their AMAZING ideas & printables with the rest of us! It sure makes learning fun for me & my kiddos! My heart is so happy that my boys loved the space unit as much as I did!