Space. The Final Frontier.

We studied the solar system in December. Winter constellations are my favorite, so I thought it would be fun to look at them. Now that I think of it, how smart would it have been to talk about the star that led the shepherds to Bethlehem!? Well, we didn't. But there will be another Christmas next year! Anyway, we didn't get to go outside to look at the stars at all, because the weather was so freezing cold!

Here are our homemade planets. We found out the size of each planet from these handy little cards from a bulletin board set I found at a garage sale. Let me just tell ya, it was the best garage sale ever!

I guess that is my passion, because I get a smile on my face just from thinking about that garage sale! The best things about that garage sale: It was the home of a teacher. She had to retire for health reasons, so the stuff was all pretty new. She was not at home. Her husband was running the garage sale, and was tired of the clutter! Those are the best kinds!! (I felt so bad for her!) Everytime I'd ask him for a price, he'd say, "Oh, I don't know, a dollar?" And this would be for hardback books or teachers guides that probably cost $50. Anyway, being a homeschooler, I hit the jackpot big time. The hardest part was limiting myself to just the things my son can use sometime soon. I think I still spent $30. You can imagine my husband's joy at bringing all those boxes home! We also bought two bookcases from them. :) I digress...

So we plotted the size of each planet on a graph to determine what size of styrofoam balls to get. Hobby Lobby has several different sizes, and there is a new kind of styrofoam that is smooth so you can paint on it. Very nice. We looked at pictures of the planets as we painted them, and tried to match the colors. That part was pretty difficult. As they rolled around on the table making beautiful "rolled marble" type paintings, I thought to cut some cardboard tubes to use as drying stands. They worked great. As did the kids meal toys from Taco Bueno (Open Season puzzle holders.) Reduce, reuse, and recycle!

Once they were dry, we applied some glow-in-the-dark paint. It's a good thing I have had this idea for a while, because the only time I could find g-i-t-d paint is at halloween. And fortunately for me, it was on clearance. We had to only paint it in thin stripes, because the colored paint washed right off when we applied the glowing paint with a wide brush.

My nephew's room is a Star Wars theme, and it was my job to put up glowing stars on his ceiling when they moved in, in...ahem...Dec. 2008. Thus, we made two sets of planets--one for my son, and one for his cousin. That was his Christmas gift for 2009. Better late than never.


This is my DH, a.k.a., Mr. Smarty-Pants, using the camera flash to make the planets glow. It is so awesome to turn off the lights and look at the galaxy! My son has stars on his ceiling, so it's a whole room of special effects. (Unfortunately he never sees them, cuz we're still in night-light mode. Actually it's leave-every-light-on-in-the-house-'cause-I'm-scared mode.)

This is my nephew's room, and my brave DH standing on a stool hanging all those planets & stars. Don't you just love the wall colors? In this picture, my hubby is putting putty on a gecko and eventually gets him to hang on Saturn.

So for this project, my son got an introduction to the galaxy, which God created on Day 1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1. (You know, I just noticed how God singles out the earth in that verse, and calls everything else "the heavens". Huh, pretty profound.) And I got the reminder of how insignificant our stuff is, the things we worry about, the things we do. Look how big God is! He created all those planets, the sun, moons, and stars, yet He cares about us. He knows how many hairs are on your head! And all we need to do is relax and let Him love us.

Psalm 8

¹ O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

² From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

³ When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

⁴ what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

⁵ You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

⁶ You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:

⁷ all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,

⁸ the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

⁹ O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!