Rocket Week Part 2

School has been out for two whole weeks which means my life and daily routine has changed drastically! The days seem three times longer since they aren't split up by driving to and from school. And the opportunities are endless! There are a million fun things I want to do with my kids, however a few roadblocks already stand in my way. I knew of course that it would be challenging planning things around a baby's schedule and needs, but what I didn't expect was the amount of laziness and whining from my older two! oh my goodness... you would think I was torturing them just to get them to do a few simple things. "Mo--oOOOOmmmmm! Do I have to? Uh... why? Can't I just watch a show, or play a computer game?" Uh no... it's kind of beautiful outside and I don't want your brain turning to mush on my watch! They are allowed a certain amount of "screen time," but I want the summer to be filled with so much more than that!

Last week we finished off Rocket Week an extension of the first themed week of the summer. We ended up doing some pretty fun things, but our week was a little more relaxed than the first week. We started out trying an experiment using mentos and Diet Coke. The "Wow" factor was not quite what I had hoped for. It was suppose to shoot up into the air causing much excitment and amazment... nope, ours just kind of bubbled and sputtered and then quickly exploded over the top without really going high up into the air.

I registered the boys to be a part of the summer reading program, so on mondays, we go to the library and they get a sticker and a small prize for showing their reading log of books we have read.  Half of the books we are reading are rocket-related, and the other half are just fun ones that they wanted. We also started reading a chapter book during story time called "Ghostville Elementary," which they are loving! I could read to them all day and never get tired of it, but we have to mix it up a little...

One day we made miniture rockets out of toilet paper rolls. They had a lot of fun doing that... lots of cutting and pasting and creating...

Then we hung them from the curtain rod as you can see here.  The rocket names were from the week before. Another cut and paste project we did was making a collage. We chose things that either started with the letter "r" for "Rocket" or were related to rockets/ space. Here are some picture of their collages:

I love that there are so many resources out there for EVERYTHING! We have been watching "the Magic School Bus" which happened to have an episode about going to the moon! We also have that particular book, which we read a few times this week.

The vote is still out for next week... it's a tie between Superhero week and Living Things... maybe you can help us decide. We'll end up doing both and probably for more than just one week. When there is so much fun to be had on just one subject it's hard to spend only one week on it! I have a lot of ideas for both themes...