Space Activities

I received an e-mail from a wonderful woman who was interested in writing a post for my blog. I've never had a guest blogger before, but when she mentioned her idea for Space activities, I just couldn't resist. Space is one of my most favorite themes. (And her name is also Betsy, so how could I say no?) Betsy is an avid crafter with six years of preschool teaching experience. In her spare time, she teaches horseback riding lessons to children with sensory and learning disabilities. Here are her activities. (NOTE: I did the first one with my class because we had our Space unit last week. The pictures are mine. I used a coloring page of the planets, found here.)

Three Activities to Teach Your Child about the Sun and the Stars

There’s no time like summer to teach your children about the universe they live in.  Because the summer provides more comfortable nights, it makes it easier to get everyone outside for family bonding as well as learning. Here are three great activities you can do this summer that will encourage your children to keep learning and to have fun while being able to show off new knowledge to their friends!

Paper Plate Solar System

With this easy activity your child can make a working replica of the solar system! You will need a paper plate, a brass fastener, a hole punch, 8 strips of white or black construction paper, a glue stick, and either handmade or cutouts of the 8 planets (you can include Pluto, if you want).

For size references, the paper plate is going to be our sun, and the planets will rotate around it.  If you really want to get creative you can include a couple of large moons around specific planets and use an extra circle with fasteners.

Cut the strips of the construction paper so each is one or two inches longer than the one before it. Glue a planet to each of the strips, making sure Mercury is glued to the shortest strip and Neptune is glued to the longest, then stack them in a pile.

Punch a hole in the center of the paper plate as well as the ends of each strip of paper so that all 8 holes align on all of the strips.  Next push the brass fastener through the strips and up through the paper plate leaving space so they can spin and move.

You can customize your sun and planets however you wish, and can repeat this craft for each individual planet to educate your kids about how the solar system works. You can also make a fun game out of it by showing everyone where the planets are at different times of the year and see if each child can create that using their maps. 

This exercise will help them to think about what is visible in the sky, how every planet travels and moves and also helps to work with retaining information. 

Painted Rock Sundial

Long ago our ancient ancestors were faced with the problem of how to tell time. They used the resources around them to invent the sun dial. Having your child recreate this ancient tool is a great way to teach your children about the movements of the earth.

For this activity you’ll need a small tub of play-dough, paintbrushes, and various colors of eco-friendly paint. You will also need 12 medium-sized rocks that you and your kids can gather from the garden, or a local park.  The last piece is a smooth stick about 1 foot long (make sure the stick has already fallen from the tree, we don’t want to damage nature!).

Once you have all your supplies, help your little one paint each stone with the numbers 1-12.  At noon, anchor the stick with a ball of play-dough so it doesn’t fall over, and place the stone with the number 12 at the end of the shadow pointing north (this is also a great chance for your little one to learn how to use a compass). Each hour, place the next stone at the end of the shadow, and by the end of the day you will have a great sun dial!  This fun exercise can lead to many more exercises. 

One could be learning to tell time while on a camping trip.  Another could be creating a schedule out of shapes where they put the shape of the shaded in areas starting at noon (a ¼ circle would be 3pm) to schedule your day or even making a game where your child is the stick in the middle and has to guess who is at which hour.  You could even use math games with the 12 numbers around your sundial. 

Constellation Night Light

There’s no better time to learn about the night sky than during the summer. Bringing this breathless starscape inside at night is easy when you create this great Constellation Night Light out of a used water jug.

To prepare for this craft, you need a battery-operated lantern, an empty water jug with the top cut off, black paint, a paintbrush, a piece of black construction paper, a glue stick, and a hole punch (you can also use a pencil or a stick in place of the hole punch).

Before sunset, have your child paint the sides of the water jug black, leaving the flat end unpainted, and set to dry.  Once the sun has set and the stars have come out, have your child get ready for bed, but remember to pack something like a kid’s bathrobe or thermal pajamas. (Since kids’ robes are usually seasonal, you may want to try a store that offers them year-round like www.crazyforbargains.com).

When the stars come out, find different constellations in the night sky and have your child pick their favorite one. Next, use the hole punch to cut out different constellations in the construction paper with random stars mixed in.  If you have different size punches, you can even do multiple constellations and starscapes.  Now place the cut-out paper on top of the jug with the battery operated lantern inside. 

Now it’s time to crawl into bed and let your child fall asleep with the night sky glowing inside the tent or room.  You can even read a book about the legends behind the constellations to help them drift off to sleep. 

In this day and age it’s so easy to rely on technology instead of connecting with the world around you. Learning about the solar system with your family is a great way to encourage your children to become more aware of their surroundings, learn fun facts and about the tools that Mother Nature has given us to survive without technology. This summer, unplug look up at the sky with your loved ones to create memories and allow your child to learn fun facts about the sky that they will remember forever.

Telescopes

I have one last space craft to share with you. I mentioned it last year when we made marshmallow constellations, but I didn't show the process of making one. It's really very simple and the kids loved them. I started by taping two toilet paper rolls together. (A paper towel roll would be better because it's longer, but I didn't have any.) Then I took 4 layers of black tissue paper, cut out a square, and taped it tightly over one end of the tube.

Meanwhile, the kids used star, sun and moon stamps to decorate a white piece of construction paper. Our tubes were the perfect size for half of a sheet.

Then I rolled the paper around the tube and used tape to secure it.

I cut two strips of black construction paper, about a half inch wide or so, and wrapped them around the top and bottom.

Using a safety pin, I poked holes through the tissue paper to make stars.

In the past, I've always poked holes to make the big dipper,

but I thought this year I would just do a bunch of stars.
So what do I have in store for you next? An Ice Age unit!

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!

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.



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!