Outta This World

Last week, Isaac got a “learning” book at the library about planets. We have been reading through it and talking all about our solar system. I am very excited that he is totally into it and asks to learn more every day. Last night, I sat down and looked through the Pinterest site for a cool way to make a solar system model with a toddler. I’ll be honest, Pinterest let me down! (*gasp*) But then I do tend to take everything a little further than most people would. There was one pin that showed a kid with different color and size balloons to learn the differences between the planets. Take that, add a little bit of Rachelcrazy and you get this…

That’s right, today we turned the porch ceiling fan into our solar system. Complete with lessons on how the planets revolve and rotate! Isaac and I spent almost 2 hours creating our masterpiece. Isaac picked out the balloons using his library book as a guide, cut the strings to hang them from, carefully read the spelling of each planet to me out of the book so I could write it on the balloon, put key information on some “planets” (i.e. – rings, iron, red spot, etc) , and climbed up the ladder to help me hang and tape them each in place!  He did such a GREAT job, and he is so proud of his masterpiece!

Once we finished, we sat back on the couch and watched the breeze blow our solar system into motion. Isaac said, “But Mommy where’s krypton?” For those of you who do not know, Isaac is following in his father’s footsteps and thinks Superman is the greatest thing on earth. So being that I now have two Superman freaks in my house, I answered “Don’t you remember honey, Krypton blew up or in this case popped a long time ago so that Superman could come to Earth and help people.” Isaac followed up with “Oh that’s right and he crashed into that field, but do you think we could make Krypton anyway?” Now how can you say no to that??? So Krypton was added to the outskirts of our solar system…

Isaac informed me that Krypton was the biggest before it popped so it’s the giant green balloon hanging back in the corner of the porch. He also informed me that he would be popping Krypton once Daddy got home to see it! I think it was his secret motive all along. He knew Mommy wasn’t going to go for popping all the planets so soon!!

This turned into my favorite stay at home mom project so far. Isaac learned a lot from it and that couldn’t make me happier. But add to that 2 hours of quality time with just me and my little man outside enjoying a gorgeous 70 degree winter day, well that just made it that much more special.