Gravity, rocket building and alphabet game

We have had a good couple of days and it's been lovely and sunny too! Harry started his space badge at Beavers this week so we have been talking about space and doing a few themed activities. He also brought home his safety badge. He is really enjoying Beavers still and likes working towards the badges.

At our church hall group session yesterday we looked at some gravity experiments. We talked about center of gravity and tried to balance pencils and spoons on our fingers to find the center of gravity. We tested to see if various items would fall quicker than each other. They all fell at about the same rate due to gravity acting in the same way upon everything, whatever it weighs.

The boys had fun trying to keep balloons in the air by blowing through straws.

Harry drew some planets at craft time using his 'See Inside Space' book for inspiration. We read about Edwin Hubble, as the Hubble Telescope had been in the quiz at Beavers and about the Milky Way. 

Harry was given a cardboard rocket for a 5th birthday present and I don't know why we didn't build it last summer but it was sitting under the spare bed so we took it out into the garden today and the boys painted it, while pretending to be Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. There have been a few cleaning jobs that have been nagging at me for a while so I did these while they were in the garden - my kitchen window blind is now sparkling! The rocket is still in the garden as it's a good weather forecast this week so they can continue to play in it.

Harry practised his cello and they both did Reading Eggs after this. Peter is managing well with it and seems to enjoy it. We also played an alphabet game. I gave Peter a bag of objects and set out letters of the alphabet on the floor. I asked him to put each object with it's starting letter. He did really well and went off to re-fill the bag with his own letter objects. I just need to find a different 'w'!

We also went to the allotment this afternoon and I meant to take pictures there but forgot. The weeds are looking healthy so we weeded a couple of beds and put some weed killer on the paths. We also planted out our first courgette seedlings and the last of the onions. The boys enjoyed riding their bikes there and back.

Harry has been reading a lot in bed still and also reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with me. His confidence has improved so much in the last month and it's really great that he is actually enjoying reading now, rather than it always being hard work.