MFW Kindergarten: Week Two The Moon

Update: I am including this post in Simply Made Sunday at Our Homeschool Fun.

Oh ds4 and I are continuing to enjoy MFW. This week’s theme is M and the moon. If you are using MFW I highly suggest visiting their message boards for loads of neat ideas. I found links to some templates for the phases of the moon and suggestions on how to turn them into a fun activity.

I printed out the phases and had ds paint each of them using a different technique. First he used a sponge.

Then some yarn. For the final two phases we used marbles and plain old paint brushes.

Here are his masterpieces, from left to right, sponge, marbles, yarn and paint brush techniques.

I let ds make some stars with a white crayon on black construction paper. I cut out his moon phases, glued them on his night sky and labeled them. Cool.

One morning we made a moon cake, another idea off the message board. Loads of fun, people! First you make “moon sand” by mixing flour, sugar, brown sugar and cocoa in a pie pan. Then make three “craters” in the sand. In crater one put baking soda, crater two gets vanilla and crater three gets melted butter (I only had shortening, worked just fine.) Add some vinegar to the baking soda crater and get a volcano! Ds said the vanilla was a pond and the shortening a lake. :)

Now you have to make moon mud by mixing in some milk. Then just bake it up. No mess!

Yes, I let him eat it for breakfast. Yes, his brothers did, too. And no, I did not take a piece with me to the computer to check my email. No, I didn’t. So I can’t tell you it tasted pretty darn good. Nope. ;)

Another cute idea I found was having ds gather some rocks from outside and painting them with glow-in-the-dark paint. Then you can hunt for “moon rocks” in the moonlight. :) That idea was fun for everyone! Except mom, who is the only person the local mosquitoes attack. Why???

Ds is doing well with learning the letter sounds. He has taken to singing the the short vowel song himself and doesn’t need much prompting from me.

Hard at work. :)

We ended our moon unit today with a simple but super fun activity: we made a rocket ship and flew to the moon. :)

Look at those little feet! Too cute.

A view from underneath…blastoff! Oh and look, he’s had a haircut since we started the unit. Nice.

His moon helmet...you know, so he can breathe on the moon.

Collecting moon rocks. I highly highly recommend ending your moon unit with this activity. Ds has been in imagination land all morning and loving it! He has been visiting the moon at different phases…he even remembered gibbous. Lots of fun with our moon week, now on to L leaf.