Fly Me To The Moon

This past week we had an outerspace theme at the summer rec program. This is always a favorite week, and a theme that we keep from year to year even when we change some of the other themes. It can be hard coming up with new ideas for activities for the same theme each year, which we try to do because many of the kids come back every year. They could feasibly be in the rec program every summer from the year they are 5 to the year they are 13, so doing the same projects and games every single year could get old!

First off, here are the sensory bins I added to our sensory area. I know a lot of people make their sensory bins really elaborate, and turn them into a realistic scene with animals and stuff. However, our kids tend to just want to dig in, rather than do a lot of pretend playing, so we keep it pretty simple.

This first one is just aquarium gravel that I found at WalMart. It is black with some flourescent stones thrown in, to represent planets. The gravel actually came that way so I didn't have to mix it myself.
Later I added some glow stars that I found.













The next one is full of confetti stars that I found at Dollar Tree.

We made Alien Slime. You've probably made Alien Slime, but called it something else. It is usually called Gak or Flubber. My favorite slime recipe involves adding equal parts of Elmer's Glue and liquid laundry starch. I saw an idea on another blog that you could add stars to your slime, so I put out the stars from the sensory bin at first. But it turned out that these particular stars are really spikey and made the slime a little painful to play with. I gave every kid a 4 ounce bottle of glue, and a cup with four ounces of starch, so all they had to do was follow the directions to mix food coloring into the glue and add the starch. Most of them loved it! A few thought it was disgusting.

For a snack, we made Moon Munchies. This involves simply spreading cream cheese over a rice cake, and then adding Cheerios as craters. I originally found the idea at Things To Share And Remember. They also used bananas, but since the kids used bananas last week for their cooking project, I didn't want to do it again. I really wanted to use round pretzels, but I couldn't find any at Safeway! It didn't end up mattering. The kids loved these. The adults loved them too! Plus they have barely any calories, so even our kids with diabetes, who have to keep careful track of calories, could eat them with no worries. Here's the example one I made... and then I ate it because I didn't bring a lunch that day!

What we do at the program is have two activities running at once, twice in a row, so half of the kids go to Activity A and half to Activity B, and then they switch. I usually run one of the activities, so there are two activities that I didn't get any pictures of, unfortunately. The first one was the stomp rockets. We had wanted to have some sort of rocket launch, I remembered watching some kids at a special ed school do a rocket launch involving a bike pump, and there was also a way to make a water rocket, and a few other ways that involved actual explosives. But they all seemed hard to do, and I wanted something that was basically fool proof so we wouldn't have a bunch of disappointed kids on our hands if we made something that didn't work. I ended up ordering a Stomp Rocket, and also a Jump Rocket, which is basically a different brand of the same product. Both sets include a stand, an air pump, and foam rockets. You stick a rocket on the stand, then the kids stomp or jump on the air pump, and the rocket goes flying up in the air. The kids had a blast (no pun intended) watching and chasing after the flying rockets. We kept them out all week at recess for the kids to play with, and we'll most likely keep them around for the rest of the summer just because they are fun.

The other activity the kids enjoyed was an Astronaut Training Course, which we did in the gym. It was basically an obstacle course. Here were the stations...
1. I had a duvet cover that I stuffed with pillows and stuffed animals. I called it the Surface Of The Moon, and the kids had to clamber over it.
2. We had two different tunnels... just the regular kind you can buy and pop up.
3. We put polydots out, and called them asteroids. The kids had to jump from asteroid to asteroid.
4. I taped some pool noodles to the ground, and the kids used them as a balance beam.
5. We have a set of Moon Shoes, so the kids had to put those on and walk to a designated line and back.
6. I dragged in our mini trampoline from the sensory room. The kids had to jump ten times to experience "zero gravity."
7. I put some wiffle balls in a bucket. We have a little pop-up basketball hoop set, so the kids had to throw the wiffle balls (or Moon Rocks, as we called them) into the basket.
8. There was a spinning office chair. The kids had to sit on it and get spinned around ten times, and we called it our Rocket Seat.
9. We had some small stuffed animals that we called aliens. We also have a claw grabber toy. The kids had to use the claw grabber toy to pick up the aliens and toss them into the hula hoop of protection.
10. The last one I just thought of at the spur of the moment. We have a box fan in the gym because we have no air conditioning. I told the kids to say their name into the box fan, and called it our Astronaut Message Transmitter, because they could hear their voices sounding weird through the fan.

We used this as a structured activity, but also left it out for the rest of the day so the kids could play in it during their free time if they wanted.

That pretty much brought our Outerspace Week to a close! We're taking a field trip to the planetarium tomorrow, and that will take up the whole day.

I really love the summer rec program! I wish it could go all year!