Space

Back in January, I stopped by the library for a bit one day after picking Caleb up from school while Granny was watching my younger two. We hadn't been utilizing the library as much as we were at the beginning of the year due to all the sickness we had there for a while, so it was high time we headed back. 

I thought that it might be fun to do a little unit on space with Caleb as part of our home"pre"schooling, and that was in the back of my mind as we made our venture through the books that January day. To my surprise, thanks to some new resources, exploring this topic was going to be even easier than I imagined. The library put together several more of the themed totes full of books that I mentioned in my original home"pre"schooling post months ago, and the new bags were on science, technology, engineering, and math topics (aka STEM). Almost immediately I spotted the one on space and snatched it up, throwing in a couple other related books from the shelves nearby that looked perfect for our new course of study.

Time and again I have been so impressed with these book kits. You can tell the librarians don't just throw in any random books related to the topic; the totes are full of a carefully selected variety. Rather than just a handful of nonfiction space books with lists of endless facts, they chose several narratives that taught the information in fun ways. From the Magic School Bus's up close and personal style full of side notes and interesting tidbits to a little trip into space with the Cat in the Hat, we explored. Even a book geared towards little girls from the Fancy Nancy series was included. My favorite though was poetry anthology called Comrts, Stars, the Moon, and Mars; not only was the language beautiful but they introduced so many interesting facts and new vocabulary in such a concise and clever manner. Even more, this kit included a toy rocket ship for the kids to play with, a laminated placemat diagram of our solar system with loads of info on the back, and a recipe for how to make space food (which we didn't try yet).

The two nonfiction books on the left were ones I found on the shelf, but the rest of the materials here all came in the tote.

Caleb and I began our study reading one book at a time, starting with the nonfiction ones and moving to the others. Looking at so many on the same topic we saw lots of overlap, providing plenty of opportunities for text-to-text connections. The different styles of the books helped keep things interesting as well. I even found and ordered a book for him from his Scholastic book order at school that month that we were able to use with this project too.

To assess how much he learned, I had Caleb write his own book about space. Though the actual start of this project got delayed, I was excited with just how much he remembered from the texts we'd looked at together weeks prior. He told me word for word what to write and then illustrated the pages after I recorded what he said. Being the perfectionist that he is, Caleb even wanted to pull out some of the books to look back at the photos as references for what colors he needed to make the planets.

While he was working on his creating his book, Hadley needed something to do too, so I made her a little book to practice her color recognition, which she was more than satisfied to illustrate.

After a while though, they grew tired and moved on to checking out the placemat.

All that coloring wore Caleb out after a while the first day that we worked on the book, so we took a long break and actually didn't get back to it until two weeks later. That said, the facts weren't quite as fresh as they'd been in his mind initially and I had to ask him some questions to help jog his memory, but he still recalled quite a bit.

Hadley was working on her letter R coloring sheet.

The best part for him I think was when he was all done and got to play with the space shuttle.

Warning: If any of you who live nearby get this kit from the library, don't be alarmed if this model spaceship falls apart easily. We had to glue it back together in a number of places. It's not the most solid toy for lots of hands to play with.

While he was treasuring the spaceship, I was just thrilled to have my very own Caleb McKinstry original book about space.

The illustration here is supposed to be "Pluto in space."

He wanted to dedicate his book to the library since that's where most of the books we used for this project came from. He also wanted to give his book to the library and choose where it went on the shelf, but I think I've finally talked him into letting me keep it.  (Ignore the dirty fingernails by the way. Looks like some of the black crayon got up under there that day and I didn't notice until now.)

Dave took over helping Caleb at one point and you can tell not only by the handwriting but by the amount of info included when my help ended and his began. Caleb and his daddy pulled out the books and read back over the facts of some of the planets to help them get a little more to fill his pages.

As another assessment, I thought it would be good to see if Caleb could make a video using his book to talk about what he knew about space. To make the experience authentic, I suggested maybe that he could make the video for Grandpa McKinstry to teach him a little about space and Caleb was all about it. When Grandpa comes to visit for the kids' birthdays this spring, I think he and Dave are going to take this little fella to the Air and Space Museum for an up close look at the spaceshuttle. Caleb's told me on multiple occasions since we got started that he wanted to go into space, but at least for now a museum or a planetarium will have to do.

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While I'm happy my boy built up his knowledge about space through this unit, God really used it to teach me something too. In our Master bath, we have a large 5' x 5' picture window that is beautiful to look out of up at the night sky in the evenings. One night in particular as we were finishing up our study of space, I sat praying as I looked up at the stars. Right then, some of details of what we'd talked about the past few weeks flowed back through my head. In particular, I began to think about my perspective of the universe compared to what God sees. To me the sun and moon look close to the same size and the earth seems much larger than both, but that isn't the case at all. The stars in the distance look tiny though many are just as large or larger than our sun. The Lord, however, sees everything for what it is. With that in mind I thought about the day to day things in my life that seem like big stuff and the important things in the world taking place that I pay little mind to or am indifferent about because I'm so distanced from them. It's all about perspective and the only One who has the perfect view is the One who created and controls it all. It really challenged me to think about how I'm praying and convicted me to ask God to give me the correct perspective I need so I don't waste time on the little details when there is so much more beyond what I can grasp.

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Romans 1:20)