Planets, Play Dough, Duck Duck Goose

We made some play dough the other day, and it was one of my favorite homeschool activities yet. I know, I know- I said I would never be a homeschooling mama and here we are, 33 school days in and loving it. I'll share more thought on that adventure soon. For now, let's stick to the dough.

One of my closest friends who happens to be my neighbor (I'm pretty lucky) inspired me to try the version found here, featuring cream of tartar. I will say, we didn't have enough salt and I think I added too much flour, so it was a little drier than it should have been, but it was still pretty great.

The directions said to add food coloring to the mix before adding the flour, but we opted to add it at the end, so we could have more color choices. This made for a cool marbled effect to the dough.

I could tell right away how much the kinesthetic (good word, eh? I learned it in college) part if them was loving the feel of the dough between their little fingers.  
 
Then, THEN, Mitchell decided to form his dough into planets. I wasn't even planning on science class that day, but it snuck right on in. He chose which planets to create, making sure they were the appropriate colors.

Then, he had them orbit the sun. I may or may not have had to look up the order in which the planets orbit the sun. Never mind the laptop in the background there...

Landon decided to make a large ball with his. I used to tell them not to mix all the colors up. But, who cares, really?

We all loved this activity, and even after our science lesson was over, they continued to play at the table while I took care of a few things around the house (I didn't post many pictures where you could see my dirty kitchen in the background. But don't tell me you didn't notice the pile of laundry on the chair behind Landon.)

Then, just before cleaning up,  I grabbed the video camera. Imagine if I could show all my homeschooling mama friends a video of our science lesson where we created the planets and had them orbit the sun? So I pressed record and prompted Mitchell, "What did you make, bud?" He replied, "The planets." "And what are the planets doing?" After a small pause, I was thinking to myself, "Wait for it, y'all" he said, "Playing duck, duck, goose."