Giant Space Walk Game

I've been having trouble posting this week. Nothing to do with my computer or anything, but I just don't have much free time in the evenings anymore. Our theme this week is Space, and I have a bunch of crafts to share with you, but first I want to show you a game I made many, many years ago.

I made our circle time rug into a game board. It was the perfect shape for it, but I now realize the rug is a bit distracting. A solid background would have been better for pictures. I printed all the images out and laminated them. I taped them to the rug for a little more support. You start off at the Shuttle Launch Pad.

We rolled big foam dice to find out where we'd go next. The first two spaces were Mercury and a galaxy. The galaxy space says, "Float through space until you land on Mars -- 3 spaces."

Then there was Venus and a small sun.

If you land on the small sun, you have to go in the middle where there is a bigger sun and warm up.

The kids don't lose a turn, they just sit on the sun until their next turn. Then there is Mars and an asteroid (since the asteroid belt is between Mars and Jupiter).

The asteroid space says, "Knocked off course by asteroid. Go back to Venus -- 3 spaces." Next up is Jupiter and another shuttle launch.

If you land on the shuttle launch, you get a free trip to Neptune and can go ahead 5 spaces! Then there is Saturn,

and a black hole.

Uh-oh. The black hole is the worst space to land on. It says, "Sucked into black hole - go to Shuttle Launch." So you would have to go all the way back to the beginning.
Then comes Uranus and another small sun.

And Neptune and a comet.

The comet space says, "Ride comet's tail to Earth's Moon -- ahead 3 spaces." Then there is little dwarf planet Pluto and an astrodog.

When I first made this game, Pluto was still considered a planet. But I couldn't take it out of my game because it would mess up the game board, so I kept it in. If you land on the astrodog, you need to go back to Pluto because you forgot him there! And finally there is the Moon and Earth, which is the last space.

The kids really enjoyed the game and we played it several times. They loved being the game "pieces" and using big dice!

All of the pictures were found through a google image search and, except for the black hole and the astrodog, are real images. You wouldn't have to make it this long or this big if you didn't want to, but it sure is more fun this way!
OK, I hope to be back this weekend to share our space crafts with you!