Life in Stepping Stones

My son is home from school once again due to the enormous rise in COVID cases. Now that he’s home, I’ve been brainstorming on how to teach him new things and occupy his time while doing homeschooling. Today was my first attempt at a theme day and I’m very excited with how it went. I look forward to expanding upon this idea for future days.

I’m not much of a teacher. Or more specifically, I absolutely despise just sitting and discussing facts in detail without a hands-on experience to drive the discussion. I hated listening to straight facts in school and apparently, it’s still not remotely enjoyable as an adult. So for me, the best way to teach my son from home during these times is to organize a day that involves different hands-on-experiences, as well as letting him learn fun facts from books and TV shows or movies that can help educate him further (and give me a chance to look after his baby sister while he’s occupied!).

Today, I focused on learning about Neil Armstrong and outer space.

Storytime

My son’s 5 year old attention span is greatest in the morning, so I chose to do story time shortly after breakfast. About a year ago, I purchased the book “I am Neil Armstrong” from the Ordinary People Change the World Series. My son was not remotely interested in it at the time but today I pulled it out and he loved it! He got a great history lesson about Neil Armstrong and landing on the moon. I quickly purchased more books from this series and will continue to incorporate them into my theme days!

Trip to the Moon

Fortunately, this summer we purchased a “rocket ship” tent for our son’s bedroom. After story time, he put on his astronaut costume and we took a trip to the moon. Before we took off, he posed for a photo next to his rocket ship. Once we were inside, we pretended gravity was making us float around. When we stepped out, my son hopped and jumped around his bedroom pretending he was walking on the moon.

*Expand on this idea: While I didn’t do this today, tomorrow I plan to turn several rooms into “planets”. Pretend you’ve landed on Venus and it’s very hot, or Uranus and it’s freezing cold. Have a little fun and set up some alien drawings and alien toys (we have the Toy Story Alien) in another room and pretend you’ve discovered alien life on Mars.

Moon Rock

After our trip to outer space, we made some souvenirs from the trip…moon rocks! It was simple to make and my son had a lot of fun making it. Every recipe online had way too much baking soda in it for only one child, so I came up with a smaller recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup baking soda
• 3 tbsp water (add gradually while mixing)
• Glitter
• Black, blue, and purple food coloring
• Vinegar, optional for exploding moon rocks

1. Pour baking soda into mixing bowl. Gradually add water while mixing. If the texture remains too crumbly, add more water.
2. Add food coloring and mix.
3. Pour in glitter.
4. Form moon rocks with your hands and place on a pan. Let it harden for nearly 24 hours. We made these around 10 am and they were still crumbly in the evening but they were rock hard by 7am the following day.
5. You have moon rocks! For some extra fun, take a syringe and drop some vinegar on them to make them explode.

Astronaut “Ice Cream” Meringues

For our final activity, we created our own version of astronaut ice cream in the form of mint chocolate chip meringues.

• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp peppermint extract
• Green food coloring
• Chocolate chips

1. Whisk egg whites on high until the egg whites form soft peaks.
2. Gradually add sugar. Add 1/4 cup and whisk. After whisking, add another 1/4 cup, and whisk again.
3. Add peppermint extract and green food coloring.
4. Whisk until its not runny. You’ll know its not too runny if you put it on the tray and it stays fairly formed to its shape.
5. Drop in as many chocolate chips as your heart desires.
6. Bake at 269F for 1 hour.

Rocket Ship Craft and Drawing

While I was compiling materials to make our very own rocket ship, my son pulled out a piece of paper a drew his very own. I was very excited about this because one, he normally doesn’t enjoy coloring or drawing, and two, he did a great job (in my personal Mommy opinion!). A lot of rocket ship instructions online include paper towel rolls but I didn’t have any spares and given the current shortage again of everything, I wasn’t about to tear a roll apart for a craft project! Instead I came up with this even simpler version using card stock (or construction paper could work too).

To make the rocket ship, we needed the following materials:

• Red, yellow, and blue card stock paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• Tape
• Cup or Bowl

To begin, cut out the following shapes from the red paper.

1. Roll up the blue paper to create a cylinder shaped tube. Tape it and cut 4 slits evenly on the bottom.
2. Place the cup on the paper to easily trace a circle. Cut out the circle and remove 1/4 of it.
3. Roll the paper up to make a cone and tape it together.
4. Tape or glue the cone to the top of the tube.
5. Trace two crescent shapes with the cup. Cut out the crescents and cut a line halfway up on the bottom of one crescent, and halfway down on the top of the other crescent.
6. Insert one crescent into the other.
7. Slide the crescent shapes into the slits in the blue tube.
8. Cut a fringed look from the yellow paper.
9. Apply glue to the top of the yellow fringe and slide it inside the bottom of the rocket ship.

Educational TV Episodes

When it was time for some downtime (and for me to take care of his baby sister!), I put on some TV show episodes that fit well with the theme of the day.

The first show he watched was Xavier Riddle and The Secret Museum‘s episode “Julia Child/Neil Armstrong”. The show was inspired by the book series he read at the beginning of the day (the characters even make a cameo in the background at the end of the book!), so this tied in perfectly. This episode is available on Amazon Prime, and the PBS app.

After this episode, we watched an episode of The Magic School Bus, available on Netflix. He’s seen the space episode recently, so instead we went with the “Taking Flight” episode about learning how things fly. Another alternative to space is to watch “Goes on Air” for a lesson about air pressure. The space episodes I’d recommend though include “Gets Lost in Space” and “Out of this World”.

It’s been a struggle for me figuring out for months how to teach from home during the COVID pandemic, especially with a baby in the house! However, I feel like I’m starting to get the chance to brainstorm and I’m excited to expand on the idea of Homeschooling Theme Days while learning from home. I have many more ideas to come including Chanukah and Christmas theme days, career days, historic days, and cultural/travel days, just to name a handful!

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