Jupiter and Uranus

Thanks to a spring cold that is making its rounds of the neighborhood, we didn't have our official group class today but Miss M and I had fun exploring Jupiter and Uranus with Littlest.  Attention span was also limited so rather than doing everything at once like we do on normal class days, we split them up over the course of the morning, which actually worked really well.  We started an activity and then she continued or expanded upon it on her own while I did household things or tended to Littlest.

By far the favorite activity today was the story set.  I laid out all the pieces and both girls had fun looking at them (and tasting them, in the case of the 9-month old--glad I laminated them first).  We talked about what the pieces were and I made up a little story about two astronaut friends getting together for a visit on Uranus on my homemade felt board (I realized quite soon that it is too small but thankfully I have a large Amazon box just waiting to be repurposed along with sheets and sheets of felt I bought two years ago for a still uncompleted and now forgotten project).  Then I gave them to Miss M, who helped them blast off around the room.

When I got back from putting Littlest down for her morning nap, we read a fun book I picked up this weekend at a used bookstore which happened to be perfect.  It's called "On the Moon" by Anna Milbourne and Benji Davies.  Miss M gathered pieces from the story set and used them to retell the book to me after we had gone through it twice.  Then she wanted to dress up as an astronaut with a "bubble head" but since the only thing we could find that fit her requirements was a plastic bag (quickly vetoed and put away), she settled for re-enacting "Ruby's Rainy Day" and splashing in puddles in the rain.

After lunch we talked about the moons of Jupiter and played the Balancing Moon Game, taking turns rolling the die and putting a moon of that color on the big piece.  Miss M noticed that there were sets of three sizes in each color and separated them out while Littlest tried her best to stack them as I talked about their color and the designs on them.  Miss M's favorites seem to be the little moons, which she lines up on their own every time we play with this toy.