M is for Moon

I haven't posted for awhile for a few reasons.  One reason is that I very often am only gathering ideas from other brilliant people and not adding much to them myself.  The main reason, though, is that we've had some ups and downs with the start of our homeschooling year.  We've had a lot of fun, and we've had some notable struggles to work through, and I keep feeling like I'm not really representing our journey well to just post pics of the cute and fun moments.  It takes notably more thought and energy to post on some of our struggles, so I decided to go ahead and post a few things as I formulate a post about more of our honest journey with it in this season.  So, that will come, and for now, here are a few of our highlights.

We are using My Father's World kindergarten this year for Isaiah, and Zeke joins in many of the activities as well.  The second unit was M for Moon.  We did one of their suggested activities to drop some rocks into a tray of flour to simulate moon craters.  Zeke could hardly believe the privilege of  throwing rocks!

Isaiah, as usual, had a very specific idea about how the craters should be arranged.

So thankful to have some dot markers, which aren't available here, because the boys really do enjoy them.  I pulled one out for Zeke this unit, and Isaiah really wanted to do one as well.

Our Oreo phases of the moon really involved more of me making them, and then Isaiah matched them up on the sheet.  We got the great printable for 123 Homeschool 4 Me.

We used random parts and pieces to assemble our space shuttle.  I just gave Isaiah a few big chunks of styrofoam we had around and a tray of pipe cleaners, bottle tops, and random bits of things I had found.

He was very focused and enthusiastic about his creations!

Ezekiel got in on the action as well but requested markers and wanted to draw on his styrofoam.

I love how much this little kiddos makes us all laugh!

When they were inside the space shuttle, we played the audio from the first moon launch, and they took preparation and liftoff very seriously.

Well, most of it was serious! :)

We made a tray of "moon dust" for the boys to write in.  They seemed to think it was pretty cool, but they actually lost interest in it fairly quickly.

One of their favorite activities was actually making moon cake.  It was a recipe in our curriculum, and you actually mix it right in the pan, and you make a few craters in the dry ingredients to pour things in (one being baking soda and then vinegar, which was the obvious favorite).  Sometimes, it is hard for me to let go of control or precision or order when we're trying to do kitchen things together, but I really did let them do this by themselves with only giving them the directions, and they loved it!  Neither of them actually even likes to eat cake, so we ended up giving most of it to friends!