This past week we were able to pull off our first themed unit study that Ashlyn and Weston were able to participate in together! I asked them the week before what they wanted to cover and Weston said planets and Ashlyn said birds. We settled on planets first and we had so much fun! I even caught Weston saying mid week that he, “loves this kind of school.” 😍

Monday, we started with an overview of the EIGHT planets. It’s still weird teaching that coming from the generation that was taught about the 9th planet, Pluto. We found balance on that topic by discussing why scientists changed their minds. We read books about the planets, watched an episode of “The Magic School Bus” where they visit all 9 planets. (Obviously that episode was a little dated.) Ashlyn worked on her ELS by identifying verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns from a paragraph about Jupiter while Weston did a color by number planets. Then both kids wrote a page about their favorite planet and created flip books with the picture that they colored themselves and names of the planets in order. Ashlyn picked Mars as her favorite and Weston picked Saturn.

Tuesday, we focused on the Earth and constellations. After a brief chat on the Earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun and some asteroid themed math, we crowded in the dark bathroom with a projector and recreated some famous constellations. Then the kids created their own! Weston made a goose and Ashlyn made a Pegasus.

Wednesday, we took advantage of a warm, sunny day and made a solar oven to capture the Sun’s light and heat to melt s’mores. The kids were patient enough for an hr and while the chocolate coating on the cookie was very melted, the marshmallow was minimally squished. We still called it a success.

Thursday, we wrapped the week up with discussing the moon and its viewable phases as it orbits the Earth. The kids were thrilled that we used Oreos to do this! This cute idea I found on Pinterest, had the kids scraping the icing off halved cookies to represent the appearance of the moon’s reflection of sunlight on Earth. Then, of course, they ate their moons.

I plan on doing these units week after week and year after year. When we repeat a unit theme, there’s going to be plenty of material to expand on each time. Right now, Archer floats in and out while we work, but next year, he could get more involved too.  It was super exciting to get to a point in our crazy move and holidays being over to pull a week like this off and all of us love it so much! Here’s to getting a good thing going!

-Lindsay