A galaxy is a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems, all held together by gravity. The planet we live on, Earth is part of a solar system in the Milky Way galaxy. When you look up into the night sky, the stars you are looking at are all part of our galaxy.

Beyond our galaxy, there are many more galaxies that we cannot see with the naked eye. According to NASA, some scientists think there could be as many as one hundred billion galaxies in the universe.

Use your imagination and a few simple supplies to make a painting of the galaxy. Download our free printable art project and template below to get started!

SUPPLIES:

• White acrylic paint
• Watercolors
• Paintbrush
• Coarse salt
• Watercolor paper

INSTRUCTIONS

STEP 1: Drip several colors of watercolor paint onto watercolor art paper.

STEP 2: Spread the paint around with a large paintbrush. Repeat with more drips.

STEP 3: After the last set of drips, add a handful of course salt to the paint puddles and let dry.

STEP 4: Now splatter a few drips of white paint on top of your
‘galaxy’ to add stars.

Part of mathematics is patterns and pattern recognition.

An easy way to do that is to use LEGO.

1.  In the simplest variant, show the model, or a photo of a model and let the children build the same.
   The simplest variant here is to just look at the shape, the next step is to have the right colors with.
   (Also mention the colors and shapes to enhance the vision and hearing combination.)
2. It will be a little more difficult if you only tell what the model looks like. First you take a yellow piece and then…
   The variant can be made for a child to tell as well. Or that the children sit back to back, one tells, the other builds and then they change.
3. If you then want to add another level, you can tell / show a basic structure and then say how many times it should be repeated.
   This is where the programming idea of loops comes in.

We made our horses out of construction paper. You can cut 2 or 3 out of one piece of paper.

Use a metric ruler to draw the shape below. Start with a rectangle that is 15 cm by 4.5 cm. Then divide it up as shown. Cut around the perimeter of the rectangle. Then cut the DOTTED LINES inside the rectangle.

Cut out your horse as shown.

Curl the tail (I know horses tails aren’t curled like that, but it seems to make it balance better) and fold the head.

Now it’s time to make your horse walk!

Here’s how it works:

The paper horse walks by rocking back and forth on its curved feet. As the horse rocks from one foot to the other, gravity pulls the feet down the incline.

So it rocks to the right, and the left foot (which is no longer touching the board) moves forward. It rocks to the left, and the right foot moves forward. It’s pretty cool to watch!

Here’s a photo that shows the shape of the feet:

The surface that the horse walks on is important! It needs to have enough friction, but not too much.

So if it is not working try a slope with more friction, or less.

You can see our setup below. Your ramp doesn’t need to be this long!

Troubleshooting:

• If you can’t get your horse to walk, make sure that the legs are nice and straight.
• Try adjusting the height of the head. For whatever reason, our horse walked the best when his head was up high.
• Adjust the height of your slope. If the horse won’t walk, make it higher. If the horse tips forward, make it lower.
• If your horse is not rocking back and forth smoothly, try trimming the feet to make them rounded. They should work like rocking chair runners! The outside edge should be the highest point.

Materials:

• Post-it Notes
• Sharpie Marker
• Painter’s Tape
• White butcher paper – I couldn’t live without this!

Preparation:

Take a big paper and put “dot quantities” all over it.

Then, take the Post-Its and write the numeral for each “dot quantity”.

Activity

Hide the Post-Its in the room and let the children match the numeral on the Post-It with the dots on the paper.

Versions

You can vary the activity to train different aspects:

• Matching shapes
• Matching numeral to numeral
• Matching letters
• Matching math facts
• Matching colors

Thanks to Busy Toddler for the idea!