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Review: Make Your Own Spaceship

7/28/2016

A boy's birthday party, children needing something to do ... what can you do? I know! Give them a kit to make model spacecraft! From ages 5 to 12 they are sure to be a hit! So, let me tell you all about it.

I received a solid well made box filled with cards with space craft to make. They came with no instructions about how to make them, and at first I thought this would be a problem until I listened to the children,
"No, put that here",
"I think it goes over there"
"Hey let's check the box maybe we'll find the picture"
"Yeah, I got it!!"

12 fully illustrated spaceships that punched out well and fit together easily. See the smiles below?

I have to tell you, I did not anticipate one small spot of trouble...too many of the children wanted to make the "make it your own" ones... Tears and recriminations almost resulted until I intervened with "who is the birthday boy? Does HE want to make them?"

Who would have thunk that the plain jane colour it yourself versions would have been so downright popular?!?!?!?! Not what I anticipated.

A couple of alien figures were included as well... I think one mysteriously made it's way to an unknown residence.

As the children worked through spaceships, I thought what an excellent addition they would be to a transportation study, or a unit on outer space or aeronautics. The children, when they finished the spaceships, then took then out and starting throwing them through the air, testing out their aerodynamics... some of them surprisingly flew really well! I had a video but well.. it's gone into the nether. :(

But what it really came down to in the end was... a bunch of children having fun laughing, creating, talking and building at a birthday party, and life was good. :)

I do have to tell you that: I received this kit from Raincoast Books for free. It's called "Make your own spaceship". It was put together by Laurence King.

If you want to buy it for your own birthday party or a study unit, check out my affiliate link as follows. Doesn't cost you a dime and helps me make ends meet. :)

Review: How to be an Space Explorer

6/12/2016

Could this book have been more timely or what?
My lad.. interested in outer space.
And what does Raincoast send me? A great great book on How to be a Space Explorer! Just so timely and perfect!

This book has everything young explorers need to know about travelling in space. Real-life photos graphs, experiments to try out at home, interviews with real astronauts, what life is like in zero gravity, finding your way around the solar system and...how to pee in a spacesuit. :)

Great illustrations and wonderful pictures guide your child on their journey on How to be Space Explorer. Lonely Planet, cooperating with author and astrobiologist Mark Brake, have combined to produce an outstanding (and helpul) book on Space Exploration. Geared for 8+.

As you can see from the table of contents the book contains a well of information. One of the things I appreciate is the different forms this information takes.

From quirky astronaut drawings that draw your attention to important details (for instance that 1/3 of all astronauts get space sick) To the full colour illustrations scattered through out the book.

This book is a resource you can use for quite a long time (or perhaps want to give a home on your shelf). Learning about mission, astronauts, needed supplies, equipment, the planets and their moons and so much more.

Experiments can be found within the pages so that your child can try their hand at figuring things out as well.

You could make a bottle rocket and learn about pressure, or learn about thrust and why it's important to consider its effects.

I have to admit, I liked this book.

Well written. The knowledge is presented as if they were talking to a person, for instance, "So how do we solve your fuel shortage problems for deep-space travel?" It's all YOU the astronaut and what YOU will need and issues that YOU need to figure out. This makes it a child-friendly book.
Full-colour illustrations, and real-life photography where appropriate.

Learning specifics about equipment and people.

Full colour and a bonus.... Canadians are mentioned! WOOT WOOT! This information made my lad smile.

How to be a Space Explorer is written by Mark Brake and is published by Lonely Planet Kids. It is a hardcover book 160 pages long, making it good value. I was sent a copy by Raincoast Books for my honest review.

Amazon.ca Widgets

Making a Constellation Viewer

2/26/2014

The lad and I have a science book we try to read from every day. It gives snippets of information that often inspire us to pursue further. Today they were talking about sextants and needing to follow the constellations.

I recalled the activity for the Lego Club through Currclick for next month and thought to meself..... I wonder if we could make that. So as the lad sent to work on some other homeschooling I pulled together the pieces called for. Then we sat down to see if we could figure out how they made it, from the pieces given. We couldn't. So the lad was "mom, why don't we just make our own version of it?"

Sure why not. :)

Since we didn't quite make it the way they wanted us to we needed to cut down the constellation cards that came with it. We cut off about 1 brick worth. Poked holes into the cards and then the lad had a hoot looking at the constellations, asking me the name and what they were supposed to stand for and then saying "Mom, to me it looks like a ____". The big dipper was the only one that he said looked like a dipper or a scoop. The Crux he said looked like a box, and the Hydrus apparently made him think of pizza.

All in all it was a fun activity. And he learned a few things as well. :)

I looked through it as well. We learned that we needed to cup our hands around the ends to block the light coming in past our eyes.

Perhaps you too could make a constellation viewer and cards? Have fun seeing what YOU see in the stars. :)

Dimensions are approximately 6 high, 12 long, 14 wide. with flats on the top and bottom.

look through side.

side view

card view side.

I linked at at the hearts for home blog hop. :)

HOPE days cancelled, revamped day plans

4/12/2013

So HOPE days were cancelled this week thereby necessitating a change in the days plans.

We did some moon phases this morning.
We started each with four cookies, plus one just for eating. :)

Then we looked at the picture in the PDF we had and worked at making our moon phases. This proved to be more difficult than the lad had anticipated. ACK!!! I broke the cookie (can i eat it?) NO...we'll figure away to use it.

But eventually the lad got his made. He didn't have to do all of them since it was a challenge for him to do and we didn't want to run out of cookies. (since we did end up eating some of the worst of them).

Here's the whole completed set. The lad didn't really think they looked like the moon as they weren't real enough, but he did understand the concept. :)

Then we went down to the basement to clean out the cold cellar. The lad needed to work hard.

We did some science....in that some of the canned goods we'd forgotten about from about...2005... well they had turned on us. So the lad got to see what happens when that occurs. The smell, the appearance, what it does to the lid of the canning jar etc. Then to see that even though the food has gone bad it can still be put to use in our compost bin. The gardens and the worms will appreciate it all.

He had the joy of chasing spiders...and the fun of seeing mom get the heegeebeegees when one landed on her and ....anyways... it was a moment of comic relief for him.

He had the physical exercise of working hard. The mathematical joy of engaging in some organization.

looks decent does it not?

we had some explorers joining us through out the cleaning time. These pigs had quite the conversation about spoiled goods and why they weren't safe to eat. it's important for explorers to know about safe foods so they don't get sick. :)

Outer Space

3/20/2013

after the bust of trying to do the Knights and Castles lapbook for the lad (as is) we decided to try the outer space one instead. This seems a better fit for us (which is what I had originally thought). This is a lapbook done by A journery through learning.

We had no complaints, even for doing copywork. But we did do more than the product asked for.

When reading through the creation lesson it had vocab words underlined so I just asked the lad...what does this mean, what about that?

Then I asked...do you know the sign language for day? no.. they have that mom? Yes, indeed, so I showed him. This led to him asking what the sign would be for night. We found that over at the American Sign Language site.

This pic comes from www.answers.com (click on the image to go direct to site)

Then we came across page two that showed how the world gets bigger and bigger. The world revolves around the sun, which is part of the milky way galaxy which is just one of several galaxies which is part of the whole universe.

the lad didn't understand what a galaxy was so we looked it up

gal·ax·y /ˈgaləksē/Noun

A system of millions or billions of stars, together with gas and dust, held together by gravitational attraction.
The galaxy of which the solar system is a part; the Milky Way.

With the next question being: where is the sun in the milky way? So we looked that up as well. :)

Mom, where is the sun in the milky way?

Rather cool eh? All the things one can learn.

we had fun looking for images of the universe, the earth and the milky way galaxy. We talked about the differences in the images and WHY they might be different. We had quite the discussion on how they could have pictures of the whole universe because that would be really hard to do as "BUT MOM, we are PART of the universe so how can we get out of it to take a picture??" (do you have an answer to that one?)