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Thursday, April 14, 2011

Japan Funraiser and Solar System (homeschool project)

I'll briefly mention a few things that happened that week of March 20th, and then get to pictures! I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of the process, but the kids (particularly Maliyah) really wanted to do something to help Japan. WE talked about sending money, but how they would get the money was the question. So then I let them think of ways they could earn money and we came up with a fundraiser. We made paper flowers for Maliyah's friend Raegan when she had her tonsils out, then again for Abby's baby shower. The kids had gotten really good at it so we decided to sell bouquets of paper flowers. I didn't want this to get too outta hand (knowing baby was going to be due soon) so we put a limit to 50 flowers (which would be $50). We visited a few friends and neighbors and I let the kids do all the talking. Maliyah did fantastic! She is normally really shy talking to strangers (not that these people were strangers) but I was really proud of her. In the end the fundraiser was a success. Thanks to donors as well the kids were able to raise $140. It was awesome when Sunday they were able to turn that money into the church specifically for Japans Humanitarian Aid.

The first week of April my family was coming to visit so we spent a lot of time (okay not really) but as much time as I felt i had the energy for, getting ready for them to come! One project I was determined to get done was our solar System. I was NOT going to deal with all those planets sitting around any longer! We got it all hung up the evening my sister Janine and her family arrived from Utah (Friday the 2nd). I finally took pictures too so yay, it's done, here are pictures and now as planets find their way down they just might find their way to the trash. SHhhhh. Here is the whole group together...it was hard to get it all in one shot because they are really spread out throughout the family room  .



We tried to create each planet slightly differently. The sun was a plastic ball that we kinda decoupaged with glue and tissue paper.



Since Mercury is such a small planet we just made it out of clay. Each child got to make one then we just had to pick one to actually use.



Venus was a styrofoam ball that we layered with some clay. It cracked as it dried which really made it look cool. AFter painting it I mod podged the whole thing to keep the cracks from breaking apart.



Earth was also styrofoam but we glued on squares of tissue paper so that it ended up a little bigger than venus.



Mars we actually made the same way as venus, but I had to really cut down the size of the ball before adding the clay so that it would be smaller than Earth. Jupiter and Saturn were the biggest paper Mache mess EVER! It seriously took us like 2 weeks to get them done and then they still eneded up losing their shape and being very difficult to even paint! Thus why Saturn never ended up getting rings...I just ran out of time and energy!

 

Uranus was pretty easy. The kids weren't super happy with how easy it was and that it wasn't a real ball but it's circular, greenish and it got it done!



Neptune also just made out of paper was pretty easy...just a different method of making a circle. We did spray both of them with gold glitter so they wouldn't be so boring.



Pluto actually started out as the earths moon, but we ran out of time to create PLuto and the kids insisted on having it, so Pluto it became! We made it the same way as mercury, just clay and then used the ends of the paint brushes to creat the craters.



Tada! Done...thank heavens! We also talked a little bit about stars and put up some plastic glow stars among the planets. Yay for being done!

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