Rocket Day

April was my last month teaching our homeschool co-op. I was so excited for my theme: space! I spent a good portion of my childhood wanting to be an astronaut, so this was my way of passing on the torch to the next generation. If nothing else, they've now eaten astronaut ice cream and watched a video on how to use the toilet in space. Mission accomplished.

For our last day I got the other moms to agree to a Rocket Field Day. We moved our regularly-scheduled co-op (thus the swimming adventure) and planned for a Friday so the big brothers and sisters could be there to participate and help. 

I started off with some games/activities to help them remember what we'd (allegedly) been learning all month. first was a game of Hot Potato where they had to chant the names of the planets in order and the chant we learned to remember them in order (My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Noodles). 

Then I gave each kid a planet (ball) and we measured their relative distances from the sun and each other:

(We kept having to return the sun to her orbit. She was prone to wandering)

Then it was on to the fun stuff: rockets! We started off with your basic stomp rockets:

(Blogger will just not let me flip this one)

Then we moved on to alka seltzer rockets, which was possibly the highlight of the day:

(Seth being very brave and blasting off the rocket in his hand)

Next level--Jon's water rocket launcher, of course. The big boys were all over this one: 

(Blogger is retarded)

We ended with the launch of quite a few model Estes rockets (too busy keeping kids from getting hurt to take pictures). We had some trouble getting a few to launch, but finally had enough success to make the kids happy. And by "success" I mean we lost most of the rockets into the trees and one onto the busy highway. They had as much fun hunting for the rockets as they did watching them blast off! 

Definitely hoping to make this a tradition (and hoping to pick a day with less wind next time)! Only thing that would have made it better would be having my dad (professional model rocket launcher) here to help us out. Next time, Dad!