The Life of a Running Momma: Weekly Learning Theme: Outer Space

Jeremy Update:

We continue to be shocked by Jeremy. We have been expecting days where he stalls out or takes a step back with progress but that just hasn't happened. Each day he does something new and blows us away with his progress and spunk. Today the OT wrote 1 2 3 on the white board and Jeremy wrote 4 5 6! Then they asked him to write more and he very calmly turned and dropped his maker in the urinal by his bed! He was also able to read all the names of the staff helping him written that were written on the dry erase board hanging on his wall. Something I've been worried about was that Jeremy wouldn't remember Carter. He and Carter had such a special relationship and it hurt to even think of that not existing right away when Carter visited. I wasn't as worried with Elise because she's so young. I knew it wouldn't hurt her feelings and they'd just start a new relationship. Today my dad was showing Jeremy pictures and asked him who they were of. Jeremy identified Carter saying he was so cute and Elise saying she was adorable. When I visited I showed him some pictures of Carter and he kept saying he was cute. Then I showed him a video of Elise and he said she was adorable. It warms my heart that he not only remembers them, but still loves them so much! I also got to hear him use some new words while the nurse was turning him. He said she was hostile and an asshole. Then when she was finished I told him to tell her thank you which he did and then blew kisses at her. When he blows kisses he puckers up and smooches at you, he doesn't actually use his hand. It is so sweet to see! Later when I was talking to him about his cats I asked him if he loved his cats and he responded with, "Hell yeah!" A tech came in to give him a shot and some medicine. The shot hurts and he was very vocal, saying "None of this is what I need. I don't need this!" But when she was leaving and I told him to thank her for the pain meds he made the I love you sign with his hand. My parents left to eat dinner while I was there and when my dad returned to spend the night he asked Jeremy if he liked spending time with me and Jeremy shook his head yes. Now onto the highlights of our space leaning theme...

During our week on polar animals Carter became really interested in the Earth, the sun, and the moon. We'd be driving and he'd say, "Let's talk more about the Earth, mommy." Then we were at Jeremy's house taking care of his cats and Carter found an Earth paper weight Jeremy had. He picked it up and started telling me about how it was a planet and pointed at random places on it telling me it was where we lived, Aunt Amanda and Uncle Paul lived, Gma and Gpa lived, and Oma and Opa lived. I thought it would be fun to do a little learning theme on outer space, not expecting him to learn and memorize anything specific, just to introduce him to the idea of space and the universe as well as have some fun talking about things he had been interested in. We had a lot of fun!

Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks. I have updated our objectives a second time because I felt like we were ready to focus on something new. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives. Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. The highlighted objectives are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:

Continue to improve fine motor skills and drawing (specifically I'm looking for him to be able to copy a circle and a square as well as draw a person with 2-4 body parts).
Understand same and different.
Accurately tell stories as well as retell the story from a book.

Use age appropriate scissors.
Develop a better understanding of time (for example, be able to describe when things happen using morning, afternoon, night)

Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).

Count and understand what the numbers mean.

Activities/Movement:

We started the week with a sensory bin. I had some star beads left over from an activity I created to use in my classroom. I've found an advantage to buying most of my classroom materials with my own money is that I now I have them to use with Carter. I put black beans in the bottom of the bin and then threw the star beads on top. As I was putting them in I was wishing Carter hadn't accidentally broken the special claw grippers I had from my classroom as they would have been fun to use in order to work on fine motor skills by using them to pick beads out of the bin. While I was thinking of it I remembered my new hair clips my mom got me for Christmas to use to pull my hair up into sections while I'm straightening my hair. They were curved which added an extra element of difficulty and it took me a minute to adjust in order to pick up stars so I wasn't sure with the fine motor practice along with the spatial aspect that Carter would be able to do it and was amazed when he did! He was so proud of himself too! Later Carter asked where the planets were so we pulled balls out of his ball pit to represent the sun and the planets and added them to his bin.

I just love the beauty of this sensory bin, the bright stars against the black beans.

So excited he was able to get a star!
We read a few books about the planets and then I pulled out some planet cards I found here. We looked at each card and discussed what the planet looked like while I told him the planet's name. Once we looked at all the cards we counted to see how many planets there were. Then we drew a circle to represent each planet and colored them with markers we felt were similar in color to the planet.

Then Carter drew a kite and we made up a story about a kite that traveled to space.

Looking at our finished pictures. Carter added dots for star
Once we had drawn all the planets we looked at the cards again and talked about how the planets looked the same. Carter noticed they all looked like circles and I explained that they are actually spheres, but look like circles when shown on paper. Then we talked about how they were different and used that opportunity to sort them a few different ways. The main difference Carter noticed was that Saturn had a ring so we sorted them into planets with a ring and planets without a ring. When we were finished he mentioned they were different colors so then we sorted the planets into piles of like colors.

Sorting into planets with a ring and planets without a ring.

Sorting based on color.
We talked about constellations and how people have imagined the stars connected to make pictures and then made up stories to go with the pictures. I found some dot-to-dot constellations here and here and we worked together to connect the dots and then color in the pictures. I'd point to a number and tell Carter what it was. Then I'd point to the next number, tell him what it was, and tell him to draw a line between the numbers. He actually did pretty well drawing lines between the numbers although he didn't fully connect the dots.

Connecting the dots. I just noticed Elise's naked booty in the background. She was diaperless due to a rash.
After we did the connect the dot constellations we made constellations of our own. We each drew a picture on black paper and then added star stickers to turn it into a constellation. I made a heart and called my constellation a heart. Carter drew a wild picture and named his constellation starby. They looked pretty cool. Then Carter asked why we didn't have a sun in the picture. I told him it was a good idea to add one and asked him what color he wanted to make it. He said pink and cut out a circle to make a sun while I cut out a moon.
I cut stars out of foam by tracing a star cookie cutter. Then I let Elise play with the stars. As she played I told her what color they were and talked about their texture and size. She loves to chew on foam so, of course, she shoved them in her mouth to chew on them. When Carter woke up I had him sort the stars based on size.
After Elise had played with the foam stars on their own I threw them into a tub with balls for her to play with. She liked to search through the balls to find the stars. I thought that was a fun idea so I put the stars in our ball pit. As Elise searched through the ball pit I switched up a page of We're Going on a Bear Hunt to say as she searched. I said, "We're going on a star hunt. We're going to find a big one. What a beautiful night. We're not scared." That got Carter's interest so he started searching with us and we counted the stars he collected when he was done.
We practiced counting backward from 10-1 and then jumping when I said blast off. Carter thought that was great fun and would ask me to do it over and over.

I found a free printable with pictures to show the life cycle of a star here. I showed them to Carter and put them in order for him. Then I asked him how the stars looked the same and how they looked different. He decided to group them into like piles. He put the stars that looked round together and the stars that didn't look all together in a pile. As we were working with the cards I was kicking myself for not printing multiple copies of the cards. Then we could have matched the like cards as well as played memory with them.

Looking at stars during breakfast.

With his stars grouped together.

To practice more with time of day, we wrote a book about what we do when the sun is up and what we do when the moon is up. I wrote the same sentence structure on each page and had Carter tell me what to fill in. Then he illustrated the book and we put it in ziplock bags because Elise loves to read them and Carter thinks it's really cool.

Craft:

I pulled out all the star and moon cookie cutters we have along with our circle cookie cutters to represent planets, the moon, or the sun. I left them in a container on Carter's craft table and he used them a few different times. He attempted to trace them with markers and got frustrated so I helped him. Then I got out finger paint and showed him how to dip the cookie cutters in paint in order to make a picture. That was quite the hit!
We made rockets out of the kids' footprints. I saw them here and thought they were cute. Once they were dry I glued them onto black paper and then cut out a few of Carter's stars he made using the cookie cutters and glued those on as well. I thought they turned out really cute but then when I looked at the picture I took of our finished product I was disappointed it looked a bit phallic in nature. Now that I'm looking back at the sample I saw online I'm thinking I need to add the window and hopefully that will make it look more like a rocket!
I cut a circle out of blue construction paper to represent the Earth. Then Carter cut and ripped green paper and glued it onto the circle to make the land. He had some pieces that hung off a bit so I trimmed them when he was done. With older kids it would be fun to make all the different planets, giving them different things to add like stripes or rings.

Make Believe:

My favorite activity of the week was playing with a cardboard box I turned into a rocket ship. First we read the book Not a Box and talked about how our box was a rocket ship. Then we played using the control panel I had drawn inside. The buttons had letters, dots, and simple two letter words on them. Carter would tell me where he wanted to travel and I would give him commands on which buttons to push, focusing mostly on letter names and the number of dots on the button so he had to practice counting. Then I'd show him the words up and go to push. It was so much fun! Elise was his co-pilot and on her side she had big shapes made of different colors. When we traveled somewhere I read Carter a book about where we were. We traveled to Mars and Earth and then Carter wanted to go visit Santa.

The rocket waiting for the kids to wake up from naps.

Carter sat in the rocket and Elise stood, of course!

Elise discovered this flap and played with it most of the time she was in the rocket.

I cut the middle out of a couple paper plates and we each decorated our own. Then I used a hole punch and string so we could wear them on our heads to look like astronaut masks. We watched a couple videos of people walking on the moon and Carter thought it was hilarious how they bounced along. I explained to him why that happens and then we pretended to be astronauts on the moon, bouncing around the house. As we bounced we talked about what it was like on the moon and what we saw.

Songs:

We talked about the word wish and what it means to make a wish. Then we sang Starlight, Starbright. Afterward I told Carter what I would wish for if I saw a star and he told me what he would wish for.

Of course, we also sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star which also happens to be one of Carter's favorite songs.

When we were playing with the foam stars I used them to sing Five Little Stars to the tune of Five Little Ducks.

Five little stars went out one night,

over the black hole and far away.

Mother star said,

Hey hey fly back!

But only four little stars flew back. (and so on)

Field Trip/Interactive Experience:

I planned to go to the Air and Space Museum to walk around and see a planetarium show. Our membership expired on the 31st and we had decided we didn't use it enough to renew. We didn't have time on the 30th so we headed out the 31st. When we arrived we realized it was closed on Sunday, so no museum trip with this learning theme. Instead I'm considering our trip into the front yard to stargaze our interactive experience for the week. Ty went out with us and helped us locate the north star along with the big dipper. Carter loved being up on daddy's shoulders so he could get a better look.