Outer Space Week at Tot School – 12.5 months old

This past week at tot school I let my husband pick the theme. (Well, actually we decided on it two weeks ago, but didn’t get a chance to do all of our activities because our house was plagued with a fun little stomach virus.) Anyway, he picked outer space as the theme, and I just went with it! This week we got to do all of our planned tot school activities and it went quite well! 🙂

Our first project was painting planets. We made them out of coffee filters and watercolor paints. This was a fun one. Baby J liked using his new art station and held the paintbrush all by himself. We made some pretty cool planets!! 

Our next activity was a tot tray with multi colored planets (or ping pong balls) and a square glass box/vase and salad tongs. Baby J was pretty much obsessed with this. He couldn’t use the salad tongs, but he kept putting the balls in and out of the box…over, and over, and over again. He loved it. Great for motor skills, and for occupying lots of time. Also, great for mommy to chase ping pong balls around the house when they don’t make it into the box and rather onto the floor! 

We also did some dot marker art with our newly acquired Do-a-Dot Markers! This was not as big of a hit as some of the other tot trays. Baby J tried the markers, and then he was over them. Maybe he was just getting hungry? Ehh, we will try again! 

Ok, this next outer space tot school activity was the biggest and best, most exciting thing ever for Baby J. He absolutely fell in love with my horribly made Jell-O sensory tub. (Read all about it here)

I put a bunch of planets from the $1 section at Target into “green alien slime” and let Baby J go crazy! He is funny about textures and I really didn’t think it would go over well with him. He strongly dislikes play dough, and I thought this would go similarly. Nope! He was elbows deep into the Jell-O. He pulled out the little planets and inspected them, licked them and then started sloshing around in the Jell-O. It was everywhere. He was laughing hysterically, and so was I!! So worth the huge mess to watch him laugh, smile, and explore. Next time though, it will be an outside activity 🙂