Planets and Moons

I am slowly getting out my space crafts from last week. Sorry about that. These next three crafts were short and sweet, so I'm including them in one post.
PLANETS
First we made planets by using shaving cream and food coloring. I sprayed the shaving cream on a plate and the kids smoothed it out with a craft stick. Then they picked three colors of food coloring and I put a few drops of each on top of the shaving cream.

Then they used a toothpick to swirl it around, but not mixing it too much.

Then they placed a white piece of paper on top of the shaving cream and pressed down gently.

Finally, they lifted the paper off and used a craft stick to scrape off the shaving cream, leaving a beautiful design behind.

When they were dry, I cut circles from them and added a ring around each one so they would look like planets. I also added some things to orbit their planets. I found these years ago and don't know where I got them. Sorry! But I attached them to the middle of the planet with a brass fastener so they could go all the way around.

FULL MOONS

To make craters on our moons, we used soapy water and added food coloring. The kids used a straw to blow bubbles (very gently!) in a cup. When the bubbles climbed higher than the rim of the cup, the kids put white paper on top, popping the bubbles as they did so.

It left really cool designs. I cut circles out of them and added a toothpick flag.

CRESCENT MOONS

One of my coworkers let me borrow her sticky ball (or whatever it's called) to make different moon craters. I put some gray paint on a paper plate and the kids dipped the ball into the paint and dabbed it on their paper a bunch of times. (I first had the paint on a plastic plate, but the sticky ball kept sticking to the plate and it was really hard to get off!!)

I cut crescent shapes from the paper and our moons were done. So simple!

I'm definitely going to buy some more sticky balls for painting. The kids had a lot of fun with it!