Science Sunday-The Planets

Last week we started to learn about Space. The first lesson- The Sun went quite well and D. were impatient to learn more.
Throughout the week we talked about what we already know and finally today we sat down and talked about different planets.
The Planets by Gail Gibbons was a great help. We read about half of it and decided to return to planets beyond Earth next week :)

We made felted model of Solar System mobile (something I was dying to do for a while now and,boy, was it a pain to put together as a mobile :D). There is this great tutorial, I, however, totally forgot to even look for a solar system kit, so we had to improvise. :D Initially it was planned as a wet-felted solar system, but since we have never wet-felted before it did not go quite as planned.
We used wool stuffing as a core for all planets (except for the smallest ones) and put colorful wool on top. D. wet-felted it all into balls in the sink and I added some needle felting after planets were semi-dry (we really wanted to hang the whole thing today :D). We attached it with some wire to a wicker wreath (no easy task I tell you) and voila! It's not to scale of course and Jupiter is almost upon the Earth now :D

Some extra stuff on topic of planets study :
Solar System at NASA
Solar System at Kids astronomy
Solar System 101 video

Solar System coloring book via A to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling's great page with many links

Hot air balloons study

Lately D. was really interested in hot-air balloons, so last week we dedicated to learning about it.
We watched some videos on youtube, there is plenty that show how to set up balloon and how to fly it properly.
We read some books on the topic:

Anya's favorite books »

}

D. made a painting (crayons and watercolor) of an "animal-themed" balloon with him and his sister on board :)

and this craft made his week I think. I found a lovely tutorial here. This mobile was so much fun to make and "crayon fairy/fuzzy girl" has a fantastic journey on it so far :)

***

I'm waay behind on my postings, but I'll try to catch up in the following week since we did a lot of stuff and I'd like to share it very much.

yet another mobile

We love love love making mobiles, and a wine rack on the ceiling of my kitchen is the perfect excuse to make things to hang.
So here we go again, this time inspired by the star mobile that Gardenmama made a few days ago.
We went about it a little different- painted card stock and cut out different shapes (traced cookie cutters and come up with our usual heart and birdies :)). After that we  covered our shapes in glitter and glued them together with a  a little bead added to each piece of string. We tied it all to the wreath that we got in a craft store.

the best season of all ..."just keep swimming "(c)

Work, work, work, barely can find time to sleep. Hubby returns from his trip to Motherland tomorrow.Yay!

What we've been doing:
1. We made an ornament for our kitchen - craft sticks painted white, glued together and decorated with glitter = snowflake mobile :)

2. I finally got myself a present- oebelskiever pan. SO much fun and deliciousness, can't get enough of it.

                         
3. We finally saw "Tangled". Wow, what a great movie! Beautiful, cute, funny and smart. D. and I loved it.The music is great, we've been listening to the OST non-stop. Probably we'll see it again sometimes next week :)

In the meantime I'm trying to catch up on all the wonderful blogs that I'm reading, soooo behind on everything...

Fall crafts-mobiles

We like to make mobiles for our kitchen and in the end of September we decided to make a fall mobile.

D. said that he would like to have a "rain" mobile. That was the simple one. D. drew a shape of cloud on the gray card stock paper (folded in two so we have two sides to the cloud) then cut it out and glued sides together. Then I had him pick out tiny sequins of "rain" colors (blue and silver) for "raindrops". Then we put sequins on the embroidery thread and sewn the threads onto the cloud. Punched a hole on top of the cloud and put a piece of yarn through and voila.

Second mobile that we did was inspired by Paper Birds Craft from Family Fun magazine. We made birdies two-sided  and stuck feathers between sheets to represent tails, D. also put googly eyes on some birds. We hanged birds by embroidery thread (decorated with more sequins:) ) attached to the cross made out of craft sticks and hanged the mobile next to the "rainy cloud". We had one extra bird and it made a pretty fridge magnet.