Cosmic Activities for World Space Week

Cosmic Activities for World Space Week

Between 4^th – 10^th October, World Space Week is celebrated every year and is the largest space event on Earth! The dates were selected because of the launch of the first ever space satellite on 4^th October 1957 and the Outer Space Treaty signing on 10^th October. This has been a worldwide event since 1999, and each year around 3,700 events take place in over 80 countries to acknowledge the incredible contributions of space science and technology. Each year has a different theme, this year is “The Moon: Gateway to the Star”. We think that this celebration is the perfect opportunity to encourage you children to invest some time and take part in some creative activities and games that are both educational and fun! Be sure to explore our range of activities to see, do and create during World Space Week. We understand that every child is different and is a different type of learner. Discover our range of activities below for visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic learners.

Auditory Learners For auditory learners, sometimes learning is easier with a song. Before they can create any arts and crafts they need a basic understanding of the solar system and what it contains. We love the ‘Solar System Song’ by Kids TV 123, they offer a range of educational songs and videos for all ages. Take your children through the range of planets within the solar system with a catchy song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ-qLUIj_A0 Getting your child to recite the planets, the stars and the moons after the song can help to make it stick. After watching the video once, repeat the video pausing between every few planets and get them to repeat what is sung in the video, eventually they will be familiar with the whole solar system!

Reading/Writing Learners There are plenty of resources around space, the solar system and all within it. Quizzes, games and puzzles help learners to write down their answers, read along with you and interact with text, as well as images. Our favourites is the ‘Little Children’s Space Activity Book’, it is packed with puzzles, colouring, drawing, doodles, sticker and identifying activities. Others include:

• ‘You Choose In Space’ - a fun fictional book that lets your children create their own stories around space.
• ‘Little Explorers – Outer Space’ – an interactive book with flaps to uncover new space discoveries and lots of information on the planets, moons, stars and galaxies,
• ‘Wipe-Clean Space Activities’ - taking playtime out of this world, including join the dots, spot the difference and maze activities.

Kinesthetic Learners Let’s get creative! Kinesthetic learners need a hands on experience, experimenting with different textures, materials, they like to get stuck in and do. With space, there are so many craft activities that you can create, we have listed our top 5:

1. Papier Mache solar system – using balloons and a lot of Papier Mache, get your child to create each planet, a variety of sizes to show the differences. Once dried, paint with creative and fun colours and hang around a bedroom or playroom area!
2. Similarly to above, create a paper solar system if you want to keep things a little less messy. You can hang the colourful paper shapes from hangers to create a mobile style solar system.
3. Constellation cards are a great way to play and learn about light and shadow, using cardboard cut-out with different star constellations, you can represent a different part to the solar system than just the colourful planets. In a dark room if they shine a torch through the cards to create their very own glistening starry night.
4. Take bath time to a new level, Growing A Jeweled Rose have a new ‘glowing space bath’. Using a mixture of highlighters, glow in the dark stars and planets with some waterproof, submergible lights you can create your own out of this world bath time.
5. Of course we couldn’t get crafty with space without a rocket! A bottle rocket is both safe and fun, all you need is a plastic bottle, water, cork, needle adaptor and a pump. As the air pumps through the water, the pressure will force the cork out of the end of the bottle and the whole bottle will shoot upwards. A little supervision is recommended with this!

Visual Learners To get to grips with how the solar system works, visual learners need to visually see what each aspect looks like and also understand the relationship they have between each other. We understand that not everyone can get to the local planetarium during World Space Week, however, you can get other toys and devices that give your children a similar celestial experience. Millets do a Kids Planetarium that uses interactive lights that project constellations around the room, showcasing the movements of each star - it also come with a CD that teaches your children how to trace the planets, stars and constellations so they can look out for them in the sky! Similarly, you can find glow in the dark 3D planet sets that can be stuck to the ceiling to recreate galactic scenes that transform the room into a glowing display. At night, you can go through with your child the different planets, include small, simple facts about each one and before long they will be able to recite all of the planets, know what they look like and be able to tell you a fact about each one. We hope you found our activities helpful and fun. We would love to know which you got up to in World Space Week, how they helped your children to learn or any new methods you tired and found a fun and creative way to teach your child about space. If your child loved World Space Week as much as we do, be sure to label their belongings with space themed, dishwasher, sterilizer and microwave safe name labels. As part of our Fab and Funky Stick-On range we have a variety of space themed name labels – Asteroid, Astronaut, Rover, Shuttle and Planets.