On the Fourth Day

On the fourth day God made the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Cormac and Rex had to pick one of the days of creation to make a diorama for the history program we are using.  I told them they could do it together if they could agree on one of the days.  They picked the fourth day so one could do the day and one could do the night. 

 Cormac made the ground with a little help from Blase.  Then he painted it.

 His favorite part was the volcano.

 Rex's job was the paint the sky and the water.  He had a creative flare and was mixing blue and white to make clouds and waves.  Rex's other job was to make the sun.  I had to help him with that a lot more than we originally thought.  We decided to make it so that a flashlight could shine through.  He had a bit of a trouble getting the tissue paper to look like a sun and still let the light shine through.  We compromised by coloring a piece of white tissue paper and putting another layer or two of yellow on the back of it.

 Cormac was in charge of the night side as well as the ground.  He made a moon out of half of a Styrofoam ball.  First I had him put craters on the moon with his fingers.  Then he colored it gray with black to accent the craters.  He also went over it in white to make it a little lighter. We also made it so a flashlight could shine through there and light is up.  He painted the sky black and then he used glow in the dark fabric paint to make stars.

 This is the finished project - night side lit up.

 The daytime side lit up.

 A close up picture of the land and island.

This is a close up of how the moon looks when it is lit up.  I thought it was quite pretty.  We loved the way the stars glowed.  I also thought that Cormac did a great job painting his land.  He mixed some colors together to get "rock" color and "volcano" color.  I surprised him by adding some sand to the "sand" paint before it dried.  It's all about the little things in life that tickle a boy.  The boys were glad to be making something and I didn't mind a little creativity input as well.  I miss doing things like this.  I think I shall award them a high grade for their dedication and great work.

The funniest thing about this project was Blase saying, "I think I'll do one of these.  I'll pick the seventh day." Stephen thought it was a great idea.  What goof balls.  Those two never did finish their projects from last week.  I can't decide if I should make them do it or just forget about it.  They were a bit behind in some subject so used their history project time to catch up.  I still might crack the whip.  They really don't have that hard of a project to do.