Lunar Lesson Part 1 - The Phases of The Moon

These days, Jr seems to be reading a lot of books that deal with the moon. Albie and the Space Rocket by Andy Cutbill has been a favourite for some time now. But now it seems Moon, Ramu and I by Geeta Dharmarajan has also been added to his bedtime reading list.

So it made perfect sense to plan today's activities around the phases of the moon, edited to suit my 2 1/2 yr old. We watered it down to feature just the Full Moon, Crescent and New Moon.

                                                         
                                                          Scotch Tape Resist Painting


This has long been a favourite activity of ours. But this time, we modified it to suit our theme. Also, I've come to finally accept that Jr simply Does.Not. have the patience to fill up a whole page with finger painting. And that prodded me to invent the (*drumroll please*) Bubble Wrap Bom Bom! Or that's what my son calls it :) It is simply a wad of newspaper scrunched up and wrapped with bubble wrap. When dipped in paint and dabbed on paper it leaves the most satisfying circular patterns, much like finger painting.

So without further ado, here's how we did it.

Materials Needed

1. Paper and pencil
2. Stencil to trace out a circle
3. Colours of your choice. I picked out some black and blue paints and crayons in shades of blue and white
4. Scotch Tape
5. Bubble Wrap (optional)
6. Glitter and Glow - in- the - dark  paints (optional)

Now let's do this!

Begin by tracing out the shape of the moon. I used the lid of a Pearlpet jar as template. Once that's done, stick Scotch Tape all over the 'moon', making sure that you stay as close to the borders of the 'moon' as possible. The point is to make sure that your 'moon' is completely protected from a toddler going berserk with paint.

Once that's done, tape your paper down to the floor or table. It helps to make a sort of border with the Scotch Tape because that will end up looking like a 'frame' once you're done (you'll see what I mean in the final pictures). Then let your kid go wild with the paints! We started out with blue before moving on to black. Jr was completely grossed out at the very idea of finger painting and after trying for about 40 seconds he yelled for a paintbrush.

Once it was time to use the bubble wrap though he really got stuck into it. He climbed right onto the table and whacked that "Bubble Wrap Bom Bom" around for all it was worth. Extra points every time the bubbles popped! :D

Once I managed to wrest the paper from my over enthusiastic son, I peeled off the Scotch Tape over the moon. That's the tape on the white triangle between the two sheets of paper.You can see how it has been painted over like the rest of the paper. The moon is speckled in the places that were not covered by the tape. But I think it looks super pretty!

We then peeled off the Scotch Tape 'frame' around the papers, and used crayons to fill up whatever blank spaces we could find. And finally Jr got busy putting glitter stars all over his paintings. I then took over and painted the moons with Glow - in - the - dark paint for good measure.

                                               
                                                       And these are our final paintings!

I'm planning on using the Scotch Tape 'moon' we peeled off in another painting, as the New Moon. Jr sat with these two paintings for about an hour, and no force or Earth could have made him stick around to paint another moon!

As always, I'm more excited about our artwork than my son is. I've been moving them around the house all morning... from the fridge to the living room to our bedroom. They are currently in Jr's playroom with his astronauts and rockets.

These pictures sure are ghastly! Blame them on a smart phone that has been battered senseless by Amma and toddler. I'll update with better pictures as soon as I can.