Making Things

In case you're wondering, this above is our DIY Darth Vader. He's made out of towel roll tube, a paper cup, some black felt, stickers and little plastic pieces all painted black and hot-glued together.

Did I tell you that M is off his wanting to be an astronaut thing? So much so that he doesn't even care to go to NASA. Plus he actually suggested to tear down his big cardboard rocket! He gave us three reasons as to why the change of heart:

1. The International Space Station is too small, no place for running around;

2. Astronauts have to be there for long stretches of time;

3. Astronauts have to train in a huge pool and train under water.

This is a clone trooper wind-up toy we found at the flea market for $1. He's in a secret rebel hide-out. There's also a capsule waiting for lift-off.

For a period of about 2 days he wanted to be Mickey Mouse and that got me worried. Knowing how he really get into these things and stays with his "themes" for a while, I was afraid of having to sing "Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggidy dog..." and speak in a very high-pitched voice for months.

This plane has nothing to do with Star Wars. We went to a Trader Joe's store and M noticed all the planes made from recycled things and pieces of cardboard. So M immediately wanted to have a plane made out of junk. We didn't have anything for a fuselage, so we had to promptly drink a can of V8. We also used a paper cup, some cardboard from old boxes, 2 wooden spools, some wire and, of course, loads of ducttape.

Fortunately, he moved on. He's into Star Wars now, big time. Which is kind of a mixed blessing. Turns out, Star Wars has a ton of toys and every single one of these toys is very expensive. And the old ones are called "collectibles" and cost even more than the new ones. How inconvenient!

This is a Jedi Starfighter made out of some tubes we got at Scrap Exchange, another paper cup and some Popsicle sticks. Actually, M figured out how to arrange the pieces by himself and then Chris glued them together with hot glue.

But never fear! Fortunately at this point M doesn't care if a toy is store-bought or home-made. Actually, I take that back. He prefers home-made toys, the junkier the better. So lately there's been a lot of toy making at our house. We're actually starting to run out of spare parts. Hence the recent trip to Scrap Exchange. Our hot glue expenditures went up dramatically as well, but still we are ok compared to having to buy all these toys.

This strange contraption is a Probe Droid of the kind that Darth Vader sends out to find Luke Skywalker. This one is made out of some plastic containers from Whole Foods, a toilet paper tube, shoe laces, more spools, some beads and various odds and ends. M's contribution (other than helping figure out which part to use where) was creating the probe's tentacles.

Of course, now all the toys are Star Wars themed - Darth Vader, various spaceships and escape capsules, droids, etc.

This is Scrap Exchange, our new most favorite place to go explore when in Durham.

Week 4 - Birthday

Posting late, but things piled up here. Ok, it's getting late and I still hope to get to bed before midnight at least once in two weeks, so I better get to the point.

Last week was M's birthday. He turned 4. Yippie!!! Babushka took a day off at work and we planned on having a very private birthday party on Wednesday evening, followed by a larger family party on Saturday. Except Grandma got sick first thing on Monday.

We still tried to have a bit of a private party on Wednesday - opening the gifts, playing with them, buying the cake, decorating it and ordering a giant pizza.

So, the gifts. First of all, M is not used to that many gifts. He usually gets 1 gift from us and whatever money he gets from all the grandparents, we just spend them on some kind of cool activities later on (kids museum, zoo, IMAX, etc). This time M got 3 gifts on his birthday and some more the next day. I think he got overwhelmed. Next year we'll try going back to 1 gift on his birthday. But here's what he got:

WALL-E - this was the most exciting gift of the day. M loves WALL-E and this little 'bot truly made his day. He took it with him everywhere and spent half the morning pushing it around the house collecting "trash" (bits of string and paper that I sprinkled liberally around the living room).

M later insisted on building a house for WALL-E so the little bot has some place to hide from the dust storms. And so we made one out of the big box WALL-E was shipped in. And then M made some "treasures" for WALL-E to collect, including a big necklace out of plastic beads.

Unit Blocks - not as exciting, but excellent edutoy. Plus it works on his muscle control skills. First thing he built was a gate and a castle which was later renamed into a planetarium.

Lego Duplo set - this is M's first Lego set and I hope not the last one. I hope to add a few more Duplo blocks to it in the future (once we're back in NC). I think adding more bricks would help retain his interest since this set is very specific and there are not enough spare bricks left over to build anything else around the construction site.

Tinkertoys - huge hit! Right away M built something that he called a rocket. Then - something else that he called a camera. He walked around the house with it stopping to take pictures. But the "camera" kept falling over. So he said: "This camera is not very high quality and it's not stable. But it takes very good pictures!"

Jedi Starfighter - M hasn't watched any of the Star Wars movies, but I got him a $0.50 copy of an Encyclopedia of Star Wars Vehicles (or some such title) at a local library sale and he is in love! His dream is to make Death Star, but I told him he has to get much better at Legos before we get him this kit. So he was beyond excited when one of his gifts turned out to be a model of Jedi Starfighter "just like one in the book, Mama!"

Then there was the cake. M wanted a cake that's "about Outer Space". And we planned on baking him one the day of his birthday. Except, of course, that Grandma got sick and I have no idea how to bake cakes (Chris is the baker, remember). Fortunately, a day or so before getting ill, Grandma and M made some gingerbread cookies for decorating the cake. So then I took M to a local bakery and he chose a cherri cheesecake 'cause it was red like Mars.

Then we decorated the gingerbread cookies. I decorated the astronauts, the rocket, the stars and the dog. And M decorated a round cookie and said it was our planet, Earth. Then we put it all together. So here's the deal - the cake was renamed into Moon. The rocket became Apollo 11 lunar module. The astronaut on the right is Neil Armstrong. The one on the left is Yuri Gagarin (yeah, I know, should've been Buzz Aldrin, but M was doing the naming and he wanted it to be Gagarin). The dog is Laika, the first animal in orbit. Stars - self-explanatory. They are all looking at our Earth. How cool was that!

The party on Saturday was cancelled, but Grandma felt well enough on Sunday to be left alone. So Grandpa, M and I went to a place called Peddler's Village in Lahaska, PA. It's a very pretty village, even in winter. But it's mostly boutiques and restaurants. However, they do have this awesome Giggleberry Fair that is totally worth the 2-hour drive (one way).

First, we went to an arcade. M's never been to one and had a ton of fun trying all the different games. Then he rode on a carousel lion. And then we went to the Giggleberry Mountain. I can't even begin to describe it. It's huge and awesome and so much fun. At first I only got M a ticket, but it looked so awesome that I ended up buying a ticket for myself as well. It's this huge multi-story maze with slides and rope ladders and tunnels and air cannons and a huge Giggleberry Fountain. Oh, and check it out, they have a 3-story tall spiral slide. I wanna go back again!

Maybe we'll get to go one more time before we go back to NC. It'd be great to go there with Chris though.

Building the Star City

I've noticed that since M spends most of his waking time downstairs, he almost never plays with the blocks nowadays. Not good! So I freed up some shelf space in the family room and moved the smaller unit blocks there. It seemed to work since he started using the blocks for different games.

And then he built a city for his astronauts and hangars for all the shuttle and the Hubble telescope and a launch pad for the rocket.

He even "planted" a few trees in his city saying that those were apple trees so that the astronauts would pick apples. And he built a planetarium for the astronauts too (can't see it on the pictures though).

Do you see that red structure made of two flat blocks and one cylindrical one? That's the International Space Station. But we ran out blocks before he could build a house for it too.

Astronaut Training

A couple of weekends ago M and I spent almost the entire weekend in astronaut training. Well, he spent it in training. I was just helping him.

But before that happened, we went to a friend's birthday. Actually, the birthday was at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. It's an awesome place with a rocket outside and a bunch of cool exhibits inside and on the museum's grounds. And yes, kids can touch and play with pretty much anything there.

So on that particular trip M spent quite a lot of time outside, primarily at the water feature. He said it was a space station's chocolate making factory. Making space chocolates... Hmm, as long as he's got his priorities straight.

Inside the museum M spent most of the time at the astronaut's exhibit looking at the videos of lunar landings and monkeys getting trained up for space flights. He also spent quite some time at this contraption kinda like the one they have at some malls. We launched a few coins down it and M concluded that it was a black hole (I couldn't agree more).

Finally, he spent the remaining hour or so in the space capsule, counting down and launching it (his countdown goes like this: "One-two-three-one-blast off!".

So the following weekend we had an astronaut training camp. Since M already knows so much about solar system, it was a bit of a challenge to come up with the age-appropriate learning tasks. And then I realized that even though we had a total of 4 solar systems around the house, we didn't have a single comet!

That became our first training task - to learn about comets and make one. Here it is, complete with a tissue-paper tail and a cotton-ball coma.

We then experimented with gravity, practiced putting the space suit on, discussed which foods cannot be eaten on the space station, ran around a little obstacle course, and went to the planetarium. By the way, M wore his full astronaut costume - space suit, glothes, helmet, etc - into the planetarium to the great pleasure of 100 or so people that happened to also attend the "Earth, Moon and Sun" show there that morning.

Further training was delayed due to inclement weather - snow! It was awesome, falling in huge heavy clumps that quickly covered the garden, the car, the driveway. M was so excited! You can see that he didn't even want to take time to change from his astronaut suit, but instead put a shark hat and a jacket on.

But then the novelty wore off and it started getting really cold outside. So we went inside and made a huge space mural of Astronaut M Exploring Lunar Surface. Then, while M acted out space shuttle's landing on the Moon and launch of Hubble, I asked him all sorts of questions for his letter to NASA (because you know, now that he is ready, it's up to them to decide what mission he'll fly and when).

Plus M wrote his own letter to NASA just to be on the safe side. Afterwards he put some more star and planet stickers on his space ship (he says they show all the places the space ship's been to) and the day was over. Now we're waiting for NASA to write back to us.

More Space Stuff

Are you tired yet? Well, M's fascination with space is nowhere near over, just the opposite. We read The Magic School Bus Takes a Moonwalk daily and The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System - almost daily. That's in addition to lots and lots of other awesome books about planets and galaxies and astronauts that we go through several times a day.

We also finished the space helmet. It's giant! I clearly over-estimated my child's head size, but at least he won't get stuck in it. Plus now even adults can try it on (and believe me, we have no shortage of the takers).

Now when M goes anywhere where there might be other children (or adults) he wants to dress up in not only the space suit, but also wear the helmet and the "oxygen tanks". And when he's not in this uniform, he likes to approach people and announce to them "I'm going to be an astronaut when I grow up". He then proceeds to introduce me as Ms. Frizzle (the awesome, but strangely-dressed teacher from The Magic School Bus series).

He addresses me as Ms. Frizzle throughout the day as in "Ms. Frizzle, we have a problem" or "Ms. Frizzle, you are the strangest teacher in school" or "Ms. Frizzle, I have a question for you" or "Ms. Frizzle, take us to the magic school bus". And yes, he addresses himself in plural sometimes because while I'm Ms. Frizzle, he is her entire class. Oh, and our cat, Xander, is renamed "Liz, the lizard" on these occasions.

Being Ms. Frizzle is really not so bad at all. Especially compared to all my previous gigs as Winni the Pooh, the ghost, Lolochka the puppy, Zamatayu the dog, Luna 3 the lunar module, the witch, etc, etc. At least I no longer have to speak in alarmingly low, startlingly high or unnaturally constipated voices. And I get to hear things such as "That was a great field trip, Ms. Frizzle" pretty much after every playdate and outing.

But I started running out of ideas for space-related games and craft activities. Thankfully, our local teacher's store had this awesome book - Solar System - Curriculum Based Hands-on Activities. It's for Grades 1-3, but I looked through it quickly and it seemed that many of the activities could be easily adapted to a younger child.

M was very excited when I told him we'll be doing more space experiments. So far we've done the experiment to see how impact craters are formed and why a space ship can't land on a gas giant. This sounds fancy, but all it took was some sand and potatoes for the former and an egg and a coin for the latter.

We also made a couple of catapults. One was large, simple and not very spectacular. The other one, slightly more complicated and much smaller was awesome. It shot little foil projectiles clear across the room!

Then we took a little break to look at some pictures of space stuff. And that's how we accidentally stumbled upon a new game. We lined up the cards, set the catapult some distance away and tried landing foil meteors on different space objects. Then M tried to launch the little astronaut into a black hole to see him get spaghettified.

Millions of Stars and a Backhoe

This is M's spaceship. It's huge (all three of us plus the cat can fit in it at once) and has lots of stuff attached to it - a control panel, lots of buttons, a mailbox, a gas tank (can't see it from this angle very well), a telescope (can't see it at all), and the faithful robot Zigzagoroll (hey, M named him).

(What's up with all these posts?! Well, we were so busy doing all sorts of fun stuff lately and I meant to blog about it as it happened... Except that we all got sick. And as we got better, we had to hit the ground running - Chris had his work and I had, well, my biz. Plus all the house chores that piled up sky-high in just a couple of days (incredible!).

So I'm playing the catch-up now while I procrastinate and put off work projects.)

The weekend before we all got sick we all went to the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill. Now that M is into space and being an astronaut, it was a perfect excuse for me to go (I love planetarium shows even better than I love IMAX ones).

M couldn't wait to go to the planetarium. Of course, he had to put his space suit on! You see, in his "The Magic Schoolbus: Lost in Space" the story begins with a field trip to a planetarium. Except planetarium is closed for repairs. I think he secretly counted on our car turning into a rocket at some point and blasting off into space a la the Magic Schoolbus.

Well, let's just say that M enjoyed every second of the planetarium show (we watched the one based on one of The Magic Treehouse books). And he learned a lot of new stuff, like what galaxies are and what black holes are and how one can get spaghettified if one falls into a black hole.

So on our way back home, he told us about all this. Except that he doesn't pronounce his "r"s and "l"s in some of the words. So it came out something like this: "See, in space there are many galaxies. Galaxies have millions of stars! And there are backhoes! Backhoes are dangeyos and you don't fall in them!"

When we got back home, he played with his spaceship (at the top of this post), which, by the one is not a spaceship at all, but now it's his lunar module. And then he felt inspired to build a model of the International Space Station out of the off-cuts from our everlasting treehouse project. And we were duly amazed.

P.S. Ah, if you are wondering why M is wearing a little furry critter backpack with his space suit, the answer is simple and kinda obvious - since M's in open space, he needs oxygen to breath and the pack stores his "кислородные баллоны" (oxygen tanks).

P.P.S. This is the latest in our collection of space crafts (no pun intended). This little guy is Giotto, a space probe that was sent to the Halley comet. Don't know what went into the original, but this model is built with a toilet paper tube, a section of an egg carton, a plastic lid from a spice container, foil, painters tape and a small piece of wood.

Rockets, Luna 3 and the Gas Giant Jupiter

Yep, we're still in the space age here at home. M still dons his astronaut suit almost every day and calls himself "космонавт Марк" or "ashtronaut Mark" (depending on who he's talking to). He takes his new mission very seriously too!

Just this past Monday he wanted to play with a slightly older boy. So I told him to first introduce himself and then invite the boy to play. So M immediately went over to the boy and said in his high-pitched voice: "Hi! I'm Mark. I'm ashtronaut." When the boy didn't respond, M explained himself further "One, two, three... Blast-off!" with an unmistakeable geasture of a rocket that's taking off.

Seriously though, not a day goes by without him requesting to make some new decorations for our Space Room (that's our family room and the adjacent hallway).

In addition to our pumpkin-box turned spaceship, two rockets from SparkCon festival (yes, they are still surviving) and a small, but ever-growing collection of space shuttles and plastic astronauts, we now have all of these:

Spaceships Taking Off from the Surface of Mars (you can see the big bright Sun and if you look very carefully right next to it there's Mercury). This particular art project, done about 3 weeks ago, used up a ton of glitter and left even more of it all over the family room.

"Luna 3" probe - my proudest creation! It looks just like the real thing (at least based on a picture in a sticker book). We used egg cartons, foil and some odds and ends.

Another large-size undertaking that we call "Earth-rise Seen from the Moon by the Apollo Crew" (you can see all the stickers of the Apollo modules, the astronaut, the lunar buggy and, of all things, a spiral galaxy). It actually looks good enough that for a while M pretended that it was an IMAX screen - he'd pull up a chair, sit down and "watch a movie".

Then we had a bit of a break and went to the Life and Science Museum in Durham. You know, the one with the drums. You know, the ones that M used to drum on for hours on end refusing to see or try anything else in the museum. You know, that's why we didn't renew our membership there last year (plus it's quite a drive from us).

Anyway, they have a life size model of an Apollo module, space costumes, a walk-in Apollo control module and some space-themed hands-on displays. Oh, and a big rocket right in front of the museum! Sure, this time around M spent most of the time inside the Apollo capsule pretending to count-down to blast-off.

Back home we also made this little display that we decided to call "Moon in the Sky" (yeah, not very original, I know).

and the "Solar System" mobile (again, not very original, but that's what this mobile is all about).

and also this "Space Shuttle Taking Off from the Launch Pad" picture (ok, so I did draw all the elements, but M helped me glue them on and he was responsible for the fire and clouds of smoke from the engines).
Then also there are these two original paintings. One is called "Canstellation of Stars with Glitter" and the other one - "Spiral Galaxies in Space". Guess which one is which.

Oh, I just realized that I still haven't taken pictures of our pumpkin-box spaceship and three other solar systems that decorate the family room. Hmm, well, to be continued...