Skip to main content

Theme: Planets

Hey, you didn't really think I'd keep up a weekly blog for that long, did you?  It feels like we did planets weeks ago now, and I actually started writing this back then too, but then I needed a few more photos, and then things got busy, and then... I'm finally finishing it now.  We've had a few weeks off from themes due to a couple of long weekends away.  But now all the playgroups are almost finished for the summer, I may blow the dust off my planning notebook and get motivated again. Anyway, to finish what we started:  Planets.

Unfortunately we didn't quite manage a field trip to see the planets!  But we did have a lot of fun painting them.  They seemed like they would be good candidates for rolling ball painting, so we gave it a try and it worked really well.

First you need some small balls.  I purchased a bag of marbles, which were just the right size to drop into our little pots of paint.  Obviously if your kid is given to swallowing small things or hurling them across the room, I would recommend you try ping-pong balls instead.

Pick your paint, drop in the balls, swish them around and fish them out with a spoon.  Put the piece of paper to be painted in a shallow tray, and plop in the painty marbles.


Then comes the fun bit.  Roll 'em, roll 'em, roll 'em!  Most times we just used two or three marbles, but a couple times Toby decided more was merrier (and made a better sound in the metal baking tray) and put the whole lot in.




I thought Jupiter came out really well, with the perfect stripy effect, but they all looked good.  We had a book for reference to pick out the colours, and then we lined them all up on the wall.

In order from the sun (not at all to scale!)

Jupiter.  I thought this came out best, with a great mix of colours and just the right amount of paint.
Uranus.  You can really see the marble tracks in the paint.

Saturn.  We put the painty marbles directly on the planet for this one, which gives a more splodgy effect. (I don't know why Blogger's decided to put it this way round)

Earth.  The Blue Planet.

Derby Museum runs a free Under-Fives Friday every week during term-time, with a few craft activities to try.  This week they had a sun and moon theme, so we went along and created our very own sun-on-a-stick out of tissue paper and a polystyrene ball.


It was supposed to have glitter on, too, but Toby's concentration ran out.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Place at the Table: Spiritual Formation Book 12

"God has ordained in his great wisdom and goodness that eating, and especially eating in company, should be one of the most profound and pleasurable aspects of being human." Miranda Harris had been intending to write a book for years. She'd got as far as a folder full of notes when she died suddenly in a car accident in 2019. When her daughter, Jo Swinney, found the notes, she decided to bring her mum's dream to fruition. A Place at the Table was the result. I thought this was going to be a nice friendly book about having people over for dinner. In one sense it is, but it's pretty hard-hitting as well. Miranda and her husband Peter co-founded the environmental charity A Rocha, so the book doesn't shy away from considering the environmental aspects of what we eat and how we live. They also travelled widely and encountered hunger at close quarters; the tension between seeing such poverty and believing in a generous God comes out clearly in A Place at the Table.
Post a Comment
Read more

Flexitarianism

Hey folks!  I learnt a new word today!  I can now proudly proclaim myself to be a flexitarian .  Yes, I wish that meant I'm in training to be a trapeze artist.  Or that I'm a leading world expert on the chemical properties of stretchy materials.  All it actually means is that I don't eat meat that much. Well, big deal.  That lumps me in with a majority of the world's population, many of whom have no choice about the matter.  So why the need for a fancy new word?  Because, it seems, that we in the prosperous West have come to regard having bacon for breakfast, chicken sandwiches for lunch and a steak for dinner as entirely normal.  But also because we in the prosperous West are starting to realise that might not be an entirely good idea. You know about factory farming, of course.  The images of chickens crammed into tiny cages and pigs which never see the sunlight, which we push out of our minds when we reach for our plastic-wrapped package of sausages in t
Post a Comment
Read more

Thirsting

When the poor and needy seek water,      and there is none,      and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them;      I the God of Israel will not forsake them.   I will open rivers on the bare heights,      and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water,      and the dry land springs of water. Isaiah 41:17-18
Post a Comment
Read more