Blast Off With PlayAway

Today is a quick post. I have been super busy with class, my son's preschool, and the PTA. I tend to over extend myself at times. Hence, the quick post.

This week at PlayAway we focused on the moon and outer space. It was a simple craft and all my friends had fun.

Supplies: rocket ship cutouts, cut outs of squares and circles, black construction paper, star stamps, and white paint.

I made this art project work for my 1-2 and 2-3 year olds. My 1-2's stamped stars on their paper where I had already glued a rocket.  My 2-3's glued the rocket on, made windows out of shapes, and stamped stars.

We played in our magical purple sand and read Good Night Moon. I also did a fun color identifying game on the felt board. I had rockets in all different colors and had my friends help me identify which color was which.

Here are some other great moon activities:

KC Edventures gives you some great moon books.

Inspiration Laboratories  has an Eric Carle inspired activity.

Head on over to Twodaloo for these great Good Night Moon activities.

Starry Night at PlayAway

Happy Hooligans inspired our star theme at PlayAway this week. I loved her activity so much, I thought why not try our hand at Van Gogh's The Starry Night.

Supplies: Cardboard (I used cereal boxes) wrapped with tin foil, washable paint, cotton balls and/or paint brushes, and star cutouts (optional).


I made this a two step process. We will paint one day, let it dry, and then glue our stars on the next day. Today we painted. I placed drops of blue and black paint on the cardboard that is covered with tin foil and had my friends paint with cotton balls.

Then I added drops of white and yellow. At this point many of my friends decided they did not like to get messy, therefore switching to paintbrushes. The paintbrushes gave more of the Starry Night feel to the painting.

After they dried we glued on our stars.

Our sensory bin was full of our magical purple sand and stars. I had three star cookie cutters and a handful of foam stars that we use in lacing. Caution the foam stars are very small. Always have an adult supervising small children or they can choke. We counted our stars, and we compared sizes of stars. My friends loved this one so much they spent 10-15 minutes at our sensory table.

We supplemented our theme with a few great books:

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star by Jane Cabera is a fun twist on the original song. I did sing the entire book and it seem to do the trick. All my friends sat for the entire book; no small job for 1-2 year olds.

I will post our complete project when we finish next week. 

Here are some other great star activities by great kid bloggers:


The Imagination Tree: Van Gogh Finger Painting

Happy Whimsical Hearts: Magical Starry Night