Shooting Stars

I saw this shooting star party favor for sale here and thought it would be pretty easy to make on our own for Space week. Each child picked one color of tissue paper and I drew lines for them to cut. I was just winging it, hoping it would work, so I only had one child do it at first.

 

The cutting took awhile. It was easy to cut because it was tissue paper, but it was still a lot of cuts. I had the kids try it themselves first, then I helped out. For the most part, they did one side and I did the other three.

I used the square pieces that were cut off the corners for added material in the middle. I took super balls (bouncy balls, rubber balls, whatever you might call them) from our prize bucket and put them in the middle as well.

Then I wrapped up the ball with all the tissue paper and put a rubber band around it.

Then came the test. Throwing it. I was worried it would bounce all over the place, but it flew beautifully and landed just once with a nice thud. After a few tests, we decided to take them outside! At first, the kids just threw them straight up in the air.

But then they got the hang of it and threw them up and over.

It was quite difficult to get a picture of them! My inspiration had ribbons coming off of them as well, but I was trying to use what I already had on hand.  We lost a few "tails" along the way, but the extra layers of tissue paper around the balls worked well and we didn't have any rips there. I tried making one with two colors of tissue paper,

but it almost seemed too heavy and didn't fly as well. Although it did look pretty cool.