Experiencing Life Differently, Space (part 2)

Here are a few more of the things we did during Junior's unit on space.

Can't have a visit to space without seeing the planets so we made a model of the planets. There are so many different model kits available and I picked up the one we used at Tuesday Morning.
Junior painted a different planet(or 2) each day and during this time he would learn different things about the planet he was painting.
It took a couple weeks to complete the planet model and then we hung all the planets from his toy bar. We also had some star lights(found them at Ikea) hanging from the toy bar along with some rope lights.
The planet model came with a poster of the sun which we taped to the back of his toy bar. We then covered it all with a space blanket and Junior had his own personal planetarium.
Junior's teacher brought him a model rocket so he had a ball putting that together and then we added it to his planetarium.
Every astronaut has to eat while in space so we had to make some food for the flight. Thanks to one of our blog readers for sharing this idea. Junior can't eat by mouth but it was still a great hands on way to teach him. Put 1 Tablespoon of instant pudding mix and 1/4 cup of milk in a freezer ziplock bag. Gently press out the air as you seal the bag. Then squish it around to mix. If your child is going to eat it just cut off a corner of the bag.

Another thing we did during one of our space visits is to go to the Nasa website so Junior could view a space shuttle lift off. He was very impressed and wanted to watch it several times.
This is he and my niece viewing the lift off on her itouch.
After viewing the shuttle launch we decided to launch our own rocket indoors. First we printed off a rocket pattern then we tied a string to one of Junior's lift bars(the back of a chair on either side of the room would work as well) slid a drinking straw over it and then tied the other end to the lift bar on the opposite side of the room. I then inflated a balloon, twisted the open end and clipped a clothes pin on it. We taped the balloon to the drinking straw and the rocket pattern to the balloon. Here is Junior's rocket ready for takeoff.
This is a few seconds of video from his first rocket launch. Junior was being a serious guy but loved this and we launched his rocket over and over and over again.