It was a beautiful morning for sidewalk chalk art, and to add purpose to Travis’s art, I decided to throw in a little STEM learning, too!

We headed outside with our book of constellations, and I challenged him to lay out shells (rocks would work well, too) to represent each star in the pictures. We started with the Big Dipper.

Could he now connect the lines, following along with the picture in our book? This was a bit of a challenge for Travis, who had to consult the picture between each line, but he ended up with a great dipper.

The Southern Cross was next. He loved using big shells for two of the stars, and had an a-ha moment when he figured out which way he should draw his chalk lines.

Then we got silly and made up new constellations. I let his imagination run wild, and soon we had a snake constellation:

And a ninja constellation:

Make sure you take pictures of all your artwork before you head inside! I then had these printed so we could put them into a booklet.

Add one picture per page, along with a fact or two about that constellation.

We left a page blank, for future imaginative additions!

These mini-books will serve both as a memory capsule of your day and for storytime down the road.