All Seasons Sweet to Me: Look Up!

First of all I have to just give a big shout out and thank you to the lovely ladies of seventhsouth.com for featuring my blog this last week on their site! {For my readers, you have to check out their website if you haven't already! It is filled with the greatest ideas and amazing advice for mamas! You'll love it!}

I also have to just say how excited I am to get to do this guest post for them about the latest summer unit I did with my little man! (This post will be featured on their website this week!)

The unit my son and I did this last week is one that will always have a special place in my heart. We call it "Lift Up Thine Eyes" and it is all about the sky! So often we forget what an incredibly beautiful and miraculous world we live in. How often do we stop to get lost in the clouds or appreciate the beauty of the night sky? This unit offers us a chance each summer to pause, put down our phones, set other distractions aside and just simply look up. As we do so, time seems to stand still as we reflect on the breathtaking wonder of God's creations.

If you're new to my blog, check out my original "Lift Up Thine Eyes" post for details and lots of fun ideas for this unit, including great family home evening ideas!!

Here's just a little look at what we did this year:

Cotton-ball Cloud Pictures

Beckam had fun pasting cotton balls onto blue paper to make puffy clouds! That afternoon we were driving in the car and he suddenly gasped and goes "Mommy!! Look! Clouds!!!!!" He was so excited to see clouds in the sky, just like the ones he had made at home :)

We also took time to cloud gaze several times this week to see how many clouds we could find.

Outer Space Learning Activities

I love the website ateachingmommy.com. It has free printable learning activities for just about every theme and topic you can think of. It even has toddler versions (Tot Packs) of each of their units that are geared toward young ones. They had great space themed activities that we did:

Sorting Stars by Size

Planet and Constellation Pictures by Number

Planet Matching

Print off the above activities and many more at ateachingmommy.com!

Painted Sun Catchers

We painted sun-shaped "sun catchers." They sell these in the craft section at Walmart for .53 cents FYI!

Library Books

Here are some books we got from our library. Most of them have a lot of text (and really cool facts) so older kids would love them! We mostly just enjoyed the pictures in them and learned about some cool concepts. Beckam learned what a space shuttle, planet, constellation, earth, telescope, astronaut and shooting star are!

Check out more book ideas HERE!

Homemade Telescopes

We made a telescope just by decorating a paper towel tube. A super easy craft that provides hours of entertainment!

Sticker Night Skies

Beckam made his own starry night with star, planet, space ship and alien stickers. (I also got these stickers in the craft section at Walmart.)

Sleep Out Under the Stars

Our plans to actually go camping were thwarted by wildfires in the State Park where we wanted to go, so my husband set up a tent in our son's room and did an indoor camping trip with him ;) We didn't get to do much star gazing but he had so much fun!

Night Sky Book

I printed off free coloring pages of a sun, stars, planets, a rocket ship, etc. and let my son make his very own night sky book!

Challenger Space Center

We took a field trip to the Challenger Space Center here in AZ. To be honest, I was a little disappointed. The website made it sound like it was a museum totally geared towards kids, and, well, I wouldn't even call it a museum. It was more like administrative offices and classrooms with plaques and pictures in the hallways and some "exhibits" here and there. We did see a few cool things that interested my son though.