Stepping Stone School
Supporting Families & Learning at Home
April 24th
At Stepping Stone School, our mission is to offer not only exceptional nurturing and education for our students, but also extraordinary support and care for all parents and families! Many families are finding new and creative ways to engage and educate their children while at home! We compiled a list of fun and educational activities and resources for you to use with your family! 
WE ARE HERE FOR YOU!
Community & Cultural Awareness
Space Station Dramatic Play

You can use foam board or poster board to transform your home into ground control
  • Tin Foil
  • Clear Packing Tape
  • Foam Board {found next to the poster board in your local craft store}
  • Plastic Bottle Caps
  • Glue Gun
  • Circle Punch
  • Permanent Marker
  • Dashboard Instrument Printables
How to Assemble the Ground Control Panel
  • First, cover the foam board with tin foil and secure it with packing tape.
  • Next, print out the instruments and screen from the Dramatic Play Space Theme Kit, cut them out, and attach them to the front of the board with clear packing tape.
  • Then, hot glue bottle caps to the board to represent buttons for the crew to push. The circle punch can be used to cut out circles to be glued on top of the buttons.
  • Use your permanent marker to write numbers on some circles. You can also write the words “stop” and “go” or even “blast off” for extra literacy exposure and motivation.
  • If you use bottle caps that do not have text on top then there is no need for the circle punch, just write directly on the bottle top.
  • You are now ready for lift off!
HAPPY HEART HUNT
Let’s blanket our world with LOVE! It’s simple! Just make a heart from any object and tape it to a street-facing window to send your love out to the world. Encourage all your friends to do the same. Then, in a few days, take a family walk (keeping 6 feet distance from others!) to search for other hearts on houses. How fun it will be to watch the love grow!
Art & Creative Expression
GLOW IN THE DARK MOON
Start by mixing the shaving cream and  glow in the dark glue .
  • A 3:1 ratio with 3 parts shaving cream to one part glow in the dark glue. Mix well.
  • Pop a dollop on the paper and let the children explore.
  • After the paint is dry – you can cut them into different moon shapes!
Planet Sun Catchers
Making this sun catcher is a great way to help children visualize the planets and our solar system on a smaller scale. It can lead into discussions on comparing and contrasting the planets while children get a hands-on opportunity to make the planets themselves.
Supplies:
·      Wax paper
·      Plastic cups
·      Crayons
·      String or embroidery floss
·      Tape
·      Hole Puncher
·      Pencil sharpener
·      Iron

  1. The sun catchers don’t need many crayon shavings, a small amount works just fine for this activity, you can let the children sharpen each crayon until they were satisfied with the point. Once you are through sharpening each color you can lay them out and talk about all the different colors of the planets.
  2. (The next step is an adult-only step, but you can let the children watch at a safe distance so they can have the chance to see how the crayon shavings melted.)
  3. After the crayons are sharpened, place some of them onto wax paper and fold it in half.
  4. Use an iron on a low heat setting, and iron the wax paper until the crayon shaving melted (this happens almost instantly). Repeat the process for each planet and allow them to cool.
  5. Finally, cut out the planet shapes from of the cooled wax paper. Punch a hole and string it from the window for you to look at and further observe.
Writing and Literacy Readiness
Goodnight Moon
Written by  Margaret Wise Brown  and Illustrated by  Clement Hurd
This short, simple story—considered a classic-- helps children put closure on their day and go to sleep. By saying good night to everything in the room, the little bunny calms down and feels ready to rest until morning.
Goodnight Moon Counting Activity
Practice counting with your favorite bedtime story, Goodnight Moon. Print or download this guide from HarperCollins Children's Books.
Visit Outer Space
Why not visit another world from the comfort of your home? With these interactive virtual tours, you can explore the galaxy and even take a trip to the International Space Station!
  • Interactive Mars Virtual Tour – NASA has teamed up with Google to create an interactive Mars virtual tour using the data collected from the Mars Curiosity Rover launched in 2011. Learn about the Curiosity mission, click around the terrain to move the Rover across the surface, and travel to different mission sites.
  • International Space Station – NASA – NASA has provided videos that allow you to tour the ISS with the astronauts on board.
  • International Space Station – ESA – The European Space Agency has also provided a guided 3D tour of the International Space Station.
  • 3D Mekanlar Virtual Sites in Space – 3D interactive tours of several of our space destinations including Saturn, Jupiter, the International Space Station, Neptune and Triton, and more
  • US Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL – Take a look at the Saturn 5 Rocket and more on this virtual field trip at the US Space and Rocket Center.

Mathematical & Scientific Concepts
GALAXY JAR DIY HOLD THE GALAXY IN YOUR HANDS!
WHAT IS A GALAXY?
According to the dictionary - A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas and dust, and dark matter.
GALAXY JAR MATERIALS
Now to create your galaxy jar, you are going to need just a few things.
Official Galaxy Jar Supply List
  • Clean glass jar with a lid
  • Tempera paint (at least 2 colors)
  • Cotton balls
  • Fine Glitter
  • Water

HOW TO MAKE A GALAXY JAR
  1. Fill 1/3 of the jar with water to begin!
  2. Add several drops of acrylic tempera paint to the water, put the lid on your mason jar, and shake to mix the paint and water.
  3. Add a bit of fine glitter to the water and paint solution. These are stars in your galaxy!
  4. Stretch out and elongate your cotton balls, adding them to the water until the bottom is filled with cotton, pressing them down into the water with a stick or a knife.
  5. Fill another 1/3 of the jar with water and add several drops of contrasting tempera paint.
  6. Repeat steps 2-4 so your colors start to mix and blend into each other.
  7. Fill the final 1/3 of the jar with water and repeat steps 2-4.
Now you have created a Galaxy jar
Homemade Moon Sand Recipe
This homemade moon sand recipe is easy to make and even more fun to experiment with!
Ingredients
·      12 cups play sand
·      6 cups corn starch
·      8 TBSP  color run powder
·      3 cups water
·       silver glitter  (to your liking)
This recipe makes a large batch of moon sand, enough for a large sensory bin. If you are making this at home or for a smaller group of kids you may want to adjust the recipe accordingly.
Space Theme Play – How To Use This Sensory Bin
After you make the moon sand, add some  astronaut figures  or  glow in the dark stars, whatever else you want or have on hand to inspire open-ended exploration.
Invite your children to explore the sensory bin. This is great for developing oral language, creativity, vocabulary, and imagination.
Character Development
Mindfulness Activities for Kindness, Focus, and Calm
Inhaling the Universe
A Start Your Day Activity
  1. Stand with your feet wide apart. Raise your toes up and lower them again. Feel the bottoms of your feet on the floor.
  2. Raise your arms as high as you can, fingers spread, and breathe in deeply. Hold your breath.
  3. Bend forward, breathe out and say a big "AHHHH!" Swing your arms down by your sides.
  4. Breathe in and imagine scooping the entire universe into your arms and over your head as you stand up again.
  5. Hold your breath and imagine showing yourself with stars, planets and space.
  6. Bend forward releasing your breath with another big "AHHH!"
  7. Imagine scooping the universe up and over your head two more times.
  8. End your exercise by taking three soft, slow, mindful breaths. Remember, you are an important part of the universe!
Physical Development
  1. Moon rock toss - crumpled up newspaper and covered in aluminum foil - toss back and forth
  2. Have a "Meteor shower" 
  3. Practice gross motor skills by tossing the meters into a buckets or other designated area.
Work on your child's fine motor skills and make your own astronaut glove box out of items you might already have!
Cognitive & Phonological Development
THE SHAPE ACTIVITY
The first thing you can do with activities like these is to let your children experiment with the shapes without gluing. Encourage them to talk with you about the shapes.
Here are some questions you can ask your child to get them talking about the shapes.
  • What shapes are you going to use?
  • What can you make with these shapes?
  • How can you use these shapes to make other shapes?
  • Can you find different sizes of the same shapes?
  • How many colors are you using?
Try to keep the questions open-ended so your child will have to think about their responses. This is an important piece in learning activities. Then you can invite your child to build a space rocket with their shapes. You can question them about what they were making and why they were making the choices they were.
  • Is your spaceship going to be long and tall or small and wide?
  • What shapes will you use?
  • How many colors are you using for your rocket ship?
  • What shape will you use for the top of your space rocket?
  • Spaceships have fire during blastoff. How will you use the shapes to make fire?
  • What about windows?
  • And the wings?
Bonus points if you set out a few space books about rocketships for your child to refer to.
Solar System Scope is an incredibly accurate solar system tour, allowing you to explore the solar system, the night sky and outer space in real-time.
Emotional & Social Development
First Aid for Feelings: A Workbook to Help Kids Cope During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Denise Daniels, a leading child development expert, has teamed up with Scholastic and the Yale Child Study Center to help children, families, and educators cope during this pandemic. First Aid for Feelings: A Workbook to Help Kids Cope During the Coronavirus Pandemic is a free 16-page downloadable workbook available in English and Spanish.
HEALTHY MOON SNACK
Serve up these delicious moon snacks to teach about craters and ridges of the lunar surface! Spread peanut butter, cream cheese or jelly onto plain rice cakes. Slice bananas and put a few slices on the rice cakes. Sprinkle Cheerios cereal on top of the rice cake.
ROCKET FRUIT KABOBS
Blast off into space with these rocket snacks! Use a glue gun to adhere tissue paper to the bamboo skewers. Cut bananas into slices and slide the slices and grapes onto the skewers. Cut off the top of the strawberry and slide it onto the skewer as a cap! The fruit rockets are ready for takeoff! 
Our YouTube Channel features over 60 videos offer by our beloved teachers reading stories form our Classic Literature Library!