Astronaut Pudding, Rocket Science & Astronaut Dress-Up

We had another great day at Mommy Camp! Today we focused on space exploration and astronauts! To start off the day we did a little space suit math while, got out the do-a-dot markers for some controlled painting fun and made Arthur an alien!

• Free Space Suit Math Worksheet
  

Lilly had to get in on the do-a-dot action too. I got the worksheets from the space packet I used the last two days.

Babies, and most kids, love stickers. Grab some dot pricing stickers, hand the kid a sheet and let them entertain themselves! Arthur really enjoyed it when we "made him an alien" and placed stickers all over him. He thought it was great fun to peel them off.

After all of that fun we decided it was time to make a rocket. This was the epic fail for today. I found what appeared to be a great tutorial about making a rocket. We did everything it said and ended up with a mentos tube that sat there in all it's sticker decorated glory and aluminum covered toilet paper roll cone topper. It just sat there. The supposed reaction that should have caused it to fly into the air didn't work. Maybe my tums were too old or the entire experiment was faulty from the get go. So, that was a dud. Luckily it didn't take long to make and we had other fun things to do! Take a look at the rocket in all it's sad, sad glory. And, if you want to give it a go you can see the tutorial I used here. I hope you have better luck than me. I'm not even posting a picture. That's how sad it was. But, astronaut pudding made it all better!

Before we made the pudding we watched a few videos about astronauts eating in space. Lilly thought they were pretty awesome. We watched an astronaut make a space burrito and eating on the space station. We talked about why eating things is hard and discussed the idea of gravity. Then we made the pudding!

Astronaut Pudding
Materials:
- powdered milk
- instant pudding mix (we used banana cream)
- water
- ziplock bag

Directions:
1. Put 1tbsp. and 2 tsp. of instant pudding mix and powdered milk into a ziplock bag.
2. Add 1/2 cup of water to the bag.
3. Seal the bag and mix. (Ours was looking a bit watery so I added a little more pudding mix until the consistency seemed right.)
4. Cut a corner off of the bag and eat!

After making pudding we read a really awesome little beginning reader. Lily was able to read it all by herself and it had little coloring breaks on each page. You can find it here for free, of course!

After making pudding and reading we made a space helmet. It was really quick and Lilly had a lot of fun. We also read and colored this great worksheet about space suits.

DIY Space Helmet
Materials:
- paper bag
- aluminum foil
- glue
- scissors
- round plate

Directions:
1. Cut off the handles on the bag.
2. Lay a small sized plate on top of the bag and trace around its edge.
3. Cut out the circle.
4. You can decorate the helmet however you like. Lilly wanted it to be shiny and metallic so I grabbed some aluminum foil and glued it onto the front of hers.

After making the helmet, Lilly pointed out that she didn't have a space suit. I was not prepared for this so I had to wing it with materials I had plus, I was tired and didn't feel like being super awesome. So, I thought, "We'll just cover you in aluminum foil!". I found pre-cut aluminum foil sheets at the dollar store awhile back and grabbed those along with some packing tape. The result is rather hilarious but she was pleased and happily went to her space ship for some dramatic play.

That's it for the space exploration focus of Space week. Tomorrow we will be focusing on the moon!