Homeschool Science: Space Unit

For science this year we are doing units based on the Next Generation Science Standards for 1st grade. We usually do more than just what the standard says, but try to hit it at minimum. There are two space standards, but they're pretty simple, so we just broke out all of our space books and kind of divided them into two sections and read some with the first standard and some with the second.

Section 1:

Standard: 

1-ESS1-1: Use observations of the sun, moon, and stars to describe patterns that can be predicted. [Clarification Statement: Examples of patterns could include that the sun and moon appear to rise in one part of the sky, move across the sky, and set; and stars other than our sun are visible at night but not during the day.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment of star patterns is limited to stars being seen at night and not during the day.]

• I had trouble finding a lab for tracking the movement of the sun that I really liked. I ended up having him build a tower in the window and then drawing the shadow at three different times in the day. Sadly, clouds came in for the last time, so there wasn't much shadow. We were able to talk about the patterns and he could predict what direction the shadows would go at different times of the day.

• Books:

The Moon Book

If You Decided to Go to the Moon

Magic School Bus Takes a Moonwalk

What is the Moon

Moon's First Friends

Earth! My First 4.54 Billion Years

The Sun is Kind of a Big Deal

Sun! One in a Billion

Barefoot Books Solar System

Solar System: By the Numbers

Going Around the Sun: An Engaging Astronomy Book for Kids with a Fun, Musical Twist

Magic School Bus Our Solar System

Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System

Postcards from Pluto

Science Comics: Solar System

Magic School Bus 3D Solar System

ABCs of Space

• While we read about the moon and moon phases, we also made them out of Oreo cookies. I just printed the sheet from the internet. A lot of websites have it.

Solar System Floor Puzzle

• Videos:

Section 2:

Standard: 

1-ESS1-2: Make observations at different times of year to relate the amount of daylight to the time of year. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on relative comparisons of the amount of daylight in the winter to the amount in the spring or fall.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to relative amounts of daylight, not quantifying the hours or time of daylight.]

• I broke out a lamp and a ball in a dark room to help demonstrate how the amount of sunlight affects the seasons (Similar to this demo). I was able to ask him questions along the way to think about how the sun affected day/night and seasons.
• Books:

See Inside the Universe

The Skies Above My Eyes

Glow in the Dark Space Sticker Activities

How Do You Burp in Space?

How Do Satellites Stay in Space?: A Book About How Satellites Work

Meteors

Little Comet

Living in Space

24 Hours in Space

Wow in Space

The Planets: Musical Books

Professor Astro Cat's Space Rockets

Stars! Stars! Stars!

Star Stuff

Star Gazers

Watching the Stars

What Makes Day and Night (actually read during section 1)

• We played Gravity Superstar (you can read my review here)

Videos:

 

Unlock! Kids Irish Folklore Game Review

Unlock! Kids Irish Folklore

Players: 1-4

Play Time: 20-60 minutes

Ages: 6+ 

My husband and I have enjoyed escape room style games for years, but I had never tried one of the kids versions until recently. We have now completed all the stories from Unlock! Kids Irish Folklore, so I thought I would share our thoughts.

Gameplay:

The whole Unlock! series play as escape style puzzles you're trying to solve. You use cards and some other components to find clues, leading you to more cards and objects until you complete the entire puzzle. The kids version has no words, just numbers to find. There are also some additional hidden numbers which lead you to star cards, giving you points at the end rather than advancing the story. This box has three different adventure decks with two stories to solve each. The difficulty increases as you progress through them. There is also a hint book and an online walkthrough for if you need a little help.

Thoughts:

My 6 year old, who can sometimes be a reluctant game, absolutely loved playing these! He would have done multiple stories in a day had his sister's naps allowed it. He loved combining the objects with the cards to uncover new cards as well as finding the hidden numbers. 

The components were so nicely done. I was impressed at the creativity and variety that came out of games centered around regular cards, translucent cards and some cardboard pieces. Sometimes we were building three dimensional objects and sometimes combining cards in unique ways.

The illustrations were beautifully done, telling a story in a unique way. However, the lack of words was a mixed blessing. It makes it more accessible for non readers and it really lets the artwork shine, however, there were a few spots where, even with the online walkthrough, I wasn't sure how they arrived at a particular solution. That didn't seem to bother Archer in the slightest. 

We both really enjoyed the experience together and will gladly play other adventures from the series in the future! In fact, I liked it so much, I got an adult version of the Unlock! game to play with my husband and teen!

Game provided for content creation purposes on my Instagram account, but the thoughts are entirely my own. I also enjoyed it enough to find it worth sharing on here.

Check out my board game section of the blog:

 

Tot School: St Patrick's Day

Here are some of the Tot School activities we have done recently. Juniper is 2.5

A play dough tray had some gold nuggets, shamrock buttons and cookie cutters.

We did a dot page from Making Learning Fun

St Patrick's Shape Tracing (print here). She's not great at it, but she enjoys it.

We also did some line tracing (print here).

Shamrock pattern matching

Measuring activity. This was her first time doing an activity like this and she did well, not perfect.

This was her first time digging star pony beads out of  therapy putty. She ended up loving it! We did not do the questions that went with this activity because she's so young.

St. Patrick's Graphing

I got out her activity board with some green straws, pipe cleaners and pony beads.

This was also her first time doing a 10s frame activity. I don't know that she fully understood the point, but she did great counting.

Roll and Cover printable from Totschooling. We did some of it before she got distracted. It wasn't much of a challenge for her though.

Affiliate links used, at no cost to you! Thank you for your support!

 

Gravity Superstar Game Review

Gravity Superstar

Players: 2-6

Play Time: 15-30

Ages: 6+ (officially 7+)

How do you turn an ordinary game night into a great childhood memory? Add blacklights! The first time I saw the components for Gravity Superstar, I knew I had to make it happen! Granted, we did play in regular lighting a few times first.

✳️Gameplay✳️

In the game, your little Superstars characters are trying to collect stars around this little planet with crazy gravity. You have double sided cards to play which let you make different moves, fall through the platforms or even change the direction of gravity. Your Superstar falls down (a la Ender’s Game) until he lands on the next platform, collecting stars and tokens along the way. Sometimes that means falling off one side of the board and coming back on the other! You get points for the stars you collect, but extra points for the pairs of the same color.

✴️Thoughts✴️

First off, the components are phenomenal! They’re all chunky and neon and look fantastic against the dark board. You cannot see this game on the table and not be interested. They look even better under blacklight (although, a couple of the colors look pretty similar and had to be verified during scoring). He even wore his star pajamas from @littlesleepies for extra starry glow! It made for a great family game night experience!

Components aside, this is such a great kids game! My husband and I both enjoy playing it with my son (and I think my teen will like it when he gets a chance to play). The gameplay is simple but fun and unique in our rather large collection. While you can bump into each other, it does not feel too aggressive to our sensitive young player. The way you use up your cards and pass to reset them feels like good training for some grown up games, which is always a plus. I don’t see us culling this one as the younger kids get older like we will a lot of the “kids” games.

Check out my board game section of the blog:

 

1st Grade Science: Heredity Unit

For science this year we are doing units based on the Next Generation Science Standards for 1st grade. We usually do more than just what the standard says, but try to hit it at minimum. Here is the second part of life science. Unfortunately, this unit was short and I don't have a lot of pictures for it.

Standard:

1-LS3-1.

Make observations to construct an evidence-based account that young plants and animals are like, but not exactly like, their parents.  [Clarification Statement: Examples of patterns could include features plants or animals share. Examples of observations could include leaves from the same kind of plant are the same shape but can differ in size; and, a particular breed of dog looks like its parents but is not exactly the same.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include inheritance or animals that undergo metamorphosis or hybrids.]

• We began with an animal sorting activity from Generation Genius. It was incredibly easy for a 6 year old, but let us start the discussion.
• Then we read some books. We probably could have skipped the two focusing on genes, but I thought he would find them interesting, and he did.

See Inside Genes and DNA

How Do You Look Like You?

Max Axiom Decoding Genes

All in the Family (probably the most grade appropriate)

• Videos

• Inheritance of Traits matching page from Exploring Nature

Valentine's Day Tot School Activities

So I realize it is actually after Valentine's Day, so this won't help anyone this year, but life just got too busy. Hopefully, this will help someone next year, or even just give them ideas for tot school activities in general!

As always, we read tons of Valentine's Day themed books. Here are her favorites this year.

Love Monster and the Last Chocolate

Pugicorn and the Lovebug

Love You Hoo

Loves is My Favorite Thing

Plenty of Love to Go Around

Love Splat

Pie Love You

A Pizza My Heart

Last year I hearts out of these colored filter sheets so we used them again this year.

Valentine's day sensory bin (wearing both a Christmas and Easter dress)

Heart pony beads with this counting page from Tot Schooling. She did a couple before running out of patience.

Working on a pattern page from Tot Schooling. She definitely still needs a lot of help.

Heart number matching from Tot Schooling

We did the letter matching hearts from Tot Schooling also, but I divided them up into three different chunks so as not to overwhelm her.

Felt envelope shape/color matching activity.

We used little heart links with some pipe cleaners to make "bracelets"

I gave her the first ten numbers from Conezilla to practice putting numbers in order.

Magnetic pattern blocks with a template from Playdough to Plato

Valentine's Day stickers.

Enchanted Cupcake game.

We have this board I got from Michaels forever ago. I gave her some Valentine's paper straws, some pink and purple pipe cleaners and a bunch of fun beads to build with.

Unicorn Glitterluck

Decorating a mini heart cake at our yearly cousin party.

Transferring pom poms (and making "cupcakes")

Heart pattern matching

Flower building

A foam heart puzzle I made... might have gotten bitten when her brother tried to take it.

Valentine's play dough tray.