Outer space is a fun unit for lots of reasons. What’s not to love about the plants and the stars and the sun?

This year, we had another reason to love it. Underpants.

Now, if you teach young kids, you know how they giggle, laugh and hoot at the very word underpants.

Try reading them the delightful book, Aliens Love Underpants and see what happens. 😀

Silliness happens!

But we don’t stop there. Our vocabulary lesson is silly, too! We talk about long johns and bloomers. We talk about our own different underpants. Some have princesses, some have superheroes, some have smiley faces and some have flowers.

We make our own aliens out of card stock. Then we dress them in underpants designed and decorated by the kids. (Here’s a blank underpants template for you. Scroll down to resources.)

(Side note: the kids got their marker privileges back after having lost them last fall, due to repeated and very unfortunate mishaps with caps. They were pretty excited to be able to decorate their underpants with markers. Hope the cap lesson has been learned!)

Lots of people think learning isn’t about fun. It’s about work. Let me tell you, learning IS and SHOULD BE fun. We are called to learn. We are delighted by learning. And if we dress a few aliens in smiley underpants while we’re learning about the planets, hey. We’ll remember our lesson a lot longer and more fondly. 🙂