Celestial Navigation

Or codes and crafts... Star Tours.

I brought in the astronaut cutout and took kid pics before we started the event. They were enthusiastic about getting their photos taken... it's fun to see them having a good time. Still. After all the time I've spent at this job, I still really get a kick out of their simple joy in things.

There were six stations for our activity on Wednesday.

One station had planets made from CDs and styrofoam balls. There were jewels and glue, fluorescent paint, glow in the dark paint with sparkles and a paper plate for each child to put their project on.

It's funny. The point of the CD is that it already sparkles and looks great. The planet part is the part that is intended to catch the paint. But they're kids. They like to slap paint on everything.

The planets were all strung with ribbon through them so all a kid has to do is tack it to the ceiling and admire it while it glows in the dark.
All the kids made one. I was glad I had enough of them prepared, but it took awhile to do it.

Next station was a space medallion. I used jewelry glue to put a washer on the back of each poker chip (the old fashioned soft kind, they've been kicking around my house forever) and the kids decorated the front with a piece of scrapbook paper, their initial and some sparkly stars. Decoupage over the whole thing.

The next activity was a station to paint a moon rock. We talked about man on the moon and the fact that there aren't very many people who ever get to see a moon rock in person.

I had fluorescent paints and a glow in the dark glitter paint to put over that, too. No photos of that one.

Then we had a make your own alien station. I took a ton of photos of kids with their little alien friends sitting on their shoulders. But of course can't show them to you. Trust me. The kids are incredibly creative and every single one of them came up with something different.

The photo isn't great. I had the wrong lens. But the bocce balls were in a really big circle and the kids had a great time bowling, trying to knock the balls out of the circle.

Clarissa* waited until she was sure no one was looking and went and picked up the smallest of the balls and ran over to us, saying she had hit the smallest one OUT of the circle! That was the 100 point ball, but the kids were keeping their own scores and there was no prize or winner of the game, it was just for fun. So I didn't call her on it, she had announced it to all the kids and I didn't want to make it an issue. The stinker.

Now, the codes. One is a grid code. I drew a tic tac toe grid, put three spots in each box (two spots in the last one) and put this message at the station:

The code key looks like this:

I introduced the codes to the kids earlier in the week, the older boys in particular seemed to really enjoy it.

We also had a coded message with the alphabet code, using 1 for A, 2 for B and so on.

And the world's easiest code, which is just writing it in English but dividing the words in unusual places.

Li keth is. On eca nwri te a fai rlylo ngmess agea ndu nles saper sonis fa mili ar wit hit, iti spr et tyha rdt or ea d.

(My spell check just went nuts.)
Last, we made crystals. I poured the heavy chemicals (ammonia, bluing) and the kids did the non-toxic parts.

The kids closest to the front row caught a whiff of the ammonia and said, "Eww, that stinks!!"
So all the kids wanted to come and smell the chemical solution. Of course.

Here's a photo of the little tank before the crystals started growing.

We'd set up a sort of mini golf course with the croquet wickets and the kids had a great time while they were between stations just whopping the bejesus out of the croquet balls.

Total... five hours of prep time.
And five hours on my feet setting up and conducting the event.

My supervisor could not find laundry bluing, so I stopped at the grocery store and bought that, too.

I have actually reached the stage where I'm saying 'that was cool' instead of 'what the hell was I thinking?', but my feet (and my still bitchy forever ::sigh:: left knee) were really, really bad after being on them for nine hours on Wednesday.

Thankfully, they were a lot better on Thursday morning.
They're not bad right now, between taking a lovely nap and sitting around a LOT since I got home around two this afternoon, I am doing okay.

The biggest reward? I had several kids tell me how much fun they had yesterday AND the parents were very complimentary.

This is what I do.
No word yet on exactly why, however. ;)