Space Lapbook – Making It

Home Sweet Home!

I’m definitely feeling that statement lately as we are finally back home! We had just begun working with our space lapbook, before things finally feel into place for our return trip, so I never got around to actually posting all the details. I put this one together before our trip with the intention of us working on it from our hotel room. I still plan to use it now that we’re home, but will probably add in some additional activities as well.

Here’s how I put it together:

The inside view
I refolded a file folder to fit the contents I wanted to include. I also laminated everything except the planets mini-book.

  

Starting from the top left and going clockwise,
I printed out this Sun Petal Book from Homeschool Share and wrote a different fact about the sun on each petal. I also added some additional color to it with markers.

I added this 10-1 countdown flipbook using the cards from the Astronaut Preschool Pack at Homeschool Creations.

But I did make a few changes to the cards to make them work better as a flipbook. I added a title page and also changed up the last page. I wanted my son to really be able to “blast off” the rocket, so I cut it out and used velcro to attach it to a card.

I found these Space Dominoes at Busy Bee Kids Printables. The pocket pictured came from the HSCreations Astronaut Preschool Pack mentioned above.

These Beginning Sound Cards are also from the Astronaut Preschool Pack.

 

This Planets Mini-Book is from the Solar System Preschool Pack at 1+1+1=1.

For the bottom middle section of the lapbook I used the Moon Phases Diagram from 2 Teaching Mommies, printed it at 50% of normal size, & stapled it to the folder to form a pocket.

Inside of that pocket I put the planets from the 1+1+1=1 Solar System Preschool Packet.

These moon phase cards are also from 2 Teaching Mommies, but after I’d already finished putting this lapbook together I found cards that I like better over at Tired, Need Sleep. I may still switch ours out if I can make them fit. (Pretty sure I printed the 2 Teaching Mommies cards at 50% size.)

These space word cards are another resource from the 1+1+1=1 Solar System Preschool Pack, once again printed at half size to make them fit. I printed 2 sets of the whole cards to use for matching/memory games etc. The little pocket pictured is again from the HSCreations Astronaut Preschool Pack.

And on the back of the lapbook I put this Zoom to the Moon ABC order page from the Musings of Me Man on the Moon Space Unit.

And I think that’s it!
When we complete our Space Unit I’ll do a follow-up post showing all the ways we use these resources and the accompanying activities we do. Until then stay-tuned for more summer time fun and Tot Tray ideas.

If you like the looks of this lapbook, you can also check out our Feelings & Rainbows weeks to see our previous lapbooks in action.

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Rainbow Week Wrap-Up

Rainbow week complete!

Yes, it was more than a week for us, but we're still away from home so "on schedule" is just not a term I'm familiar with lately. 

I'll probably still do some more letter Rr sound review when we get home, but overall I'd call this week a success in terms of both fun and education. This was a very smiley unit for us!

(I'll post more on our review activities if and when we do them.)

Here's a wrap-up of all of our Rainbows/Noah/Letter Rr activties:

You can find detailed pictures of our Rainbows lapbook and links to all the free printables HERE.

We started off our Rainbow week right by reading the story of Noah in The Child's Story Bible. We also read lots of other great rainbow books this week. You can see my book picks at the bottom of the page. To go along with our Noah story, Dude played with the popsicle stick puppets from our lapbook (link above).

   

He also went through the color matching flip book to match up the colored animals with the correct color words. (link above) He liked this a lot.

He did some "clean" painting with water using this Tigger and Pooh Paint with Water Coloring Book. It comes with a paintbrush but I gave him a Q-tip to use here just for a little something different.

   

Dude used a paper bag and yarn to make his own ark for Noah and the animals. You can read the details of that craft HERE. This lead to pretend play and story retelling with the popsicle stick puppets.

He played with his Travel Lite Brite.

   

He also made these yummy rainbow popsicles all by himself!

You can find the recipe and instructions for them HERE.

He did some fine motor skills work by clipping colored paper clips onto matching cards.

He made a fruit loop rainbow using the back page of our lapbook (link above).

   

He watercolored an R is for Racecar printout from Making Learning Fun and used markers to color an R is for Robot printout from Homeschool Creations. Both Red, of course!

We read the story of Noah quite a few times this week. And eventually pulled out our Noah sequencing cards. (link above) The first time we went through these I had Dude order them as I read the story, working on his listening skills. The next time I had him attempt to narrate the story while he sequenced them. He had a tough time with this, but did fairly well with some prodding. 

   

We did our tracing this week the same as last week. First I wrote the letter with a dry erase marker and had him erase it with his fingers a couple of times. When he said he was ready I let him take the marker and write the letter himself. This printout is from Tired, Need Sleep.

We also attempted something similar to a Montessori tracing technique I read about over at Montessori Tidbits. To do it I put one of each colored crayon in a bowl to Dude's left, an empty bowl on the right and an Rr outline printout in the middle. The idea was for him to trace the R with each crayon on the left then move that crayon to the right and continue with the next color. The result should be a rainbow colored R. Dude sort of did that. He didn't always finish the tracing before moving on to the next color. Oh well, he still got some practice and ended up with a colorful R!  

In an effort to take some of our school work outside we did a series of scavenger hunts to collect pieces for a rainbow collage. You can see more details about this activity and some unique places to hide your pieces  on THIS POST.

Using some applesauce containers and water with food coloring I set up a simple color mixing activity for Dude. I gave him the primary colors and let him use them to mix the secondary colors.

We talked about those results and used the color wheel and guess & check flaps I had made for the lapbook for review. (link above)

I drew out a simple graph and gave Dude a small amount of fruit loops to fill it.

We then used it to talk about counting, the concepts of more & less, and the basics of reading a bar graph.

In the picture he was telling me how many oranges we had.

For another outdoor activity we did a Rainbow Photo Scavenger Hunt. You can read the details on THIS POST. This was a huge hit and has actually already been repeated!

Dude colored the God Made Rainbows mini coloring book from his lapbook. (link above)

He also matched up his b&w color word cards to the tri-fold ROYGBIV sheet in our lapbook (link above). This is the first time I've had him try to match words and he caught on really quickly!

   

As one last, fun letter R activity I let Dude use tape to assemble this cute little rabbit toilet paper tube craft from DLTK-kids. I cut the pieces out and did some of the coloring for him. He struggled with the tape dispenser, but didn't want any help from Mama. He was very proud of the result!

 

Book picks for our Rainbow Unit Study:

 

 

Blog Note: We're on Facebook!

I'm just getting the page going over there, but I've already shared a couple of online freebies you don't want to miss!

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