Impromptu Science Lesson

Today we woke to two more inches of snow outside and a warm 27 degrees. Today also happens to be super bowl Sunday, or as commercials say "The Big Game Day." So our little family doesn't have plans until this evening. I ask Babycake if she would like to play with play-dough as we've already played chase, made a blanket fort, read some books, and watched "Bear in the Big Blue House: Potty." Did I mention it was only like 10 am?

She got very excited at the idea of playing with play-dough which was surprising as she'd never before seen or played with it. My husband also got a little excited to for some reason. So there we all were squashing the dough, asking Babycake which dough was which color, and cutting shapes to see if she could identify them. Then, hubby takes all the yellow, makes a big ball, and sets it, with purpose, in the center of our table. Me, "what are you doing?" Him, "just wait, you'll see." Me, "making the solar system hu?" Him, slightly disappointed I guessed so easily, "yeah, how'd you know?" I just smiled, no need to remind him of my genius. ;-)

So as Babycake continues to squash dough and point out shapes (naming about half correctly and naming the other half the same names already mentioned) hubby and I got to work. When you have nothing to do on the day's agenda but clean, making a solar system becomes very serious work: "you're making Mars to big," "lets do Jupiter in purple," "how many moons does Venus have again?"

Babycake did not take long to realize we were no longer paying attention to her naming skills and tried to help. She really is the best-worst helper. She tries, she really does, but she just gets in the way. Like I said, this was serious work. However, b/c Babycake decided that helping was throwing pieces of play-dough at our line of planets, she helped remind us to include the asteroid belt.

Tada! Beautiful right? Pure genius.

Once we were finished my husband started to explain the solar system to Babycake. She's 21 months. She didn't have a clue what he was saying. All she got was that Daddy was pointing to the balls of play-dough and not letting her touch. Hmmmm. I got on YouTube and found a couple solar system videos for kids I had used in little lessons before with older kids I've nannied. By older I mean like 4-7 year olds.

click on image to go to video

Babycake loves this video. Honestly she still probably has no clue what it's about, but it's catchy and educational. I think we watched it about three times before hubby started searching for other videos for kids about planets, followed by videos about shapes, letters, and numbers. This little impromptu science lesson kept Babycake entertained for almost two hours. That is a great success in parenting I think.

We all had a great time learning, singing, and squashing play-dough. If you'd like to see some of the other videos or sites we visited go to my Kid Education board on Pinterest.