Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, We Are Going to the Moon!

For our summer crafts and story and circle time, we started learning about our families and then explored the natural world around us. Then we set our sites on the stars!

We climbed aboard our rocket ships and zoomed up to the moon, visited a few planets, and then swung by the stars.

Here’s how we made our rocket ships:

Materials:

• Cardboard Tube
• Tinfoil
• Poster Board (we used red and blue)
• Stickers (for decorating your rocket)
• Scissors
• Glue
• Jar Top or Glass (for tracing a circle)
• Pencil or Crayon

Directions:

Step 1: Roll the toilet paper in tinfoil.

Step 2: Trace two circles on your poster board and cut out the circles.

Step 3: Cut a radius in one of the circles and fold it to form a cone. Glue the cone on top of the toilet paper roll.

Step 4: Cut the other circle in half.

Step 5: Cut slits in the side of the toilet paper roll and insert the half circle into the slits.

Step 6: Decorate your rocket ship and enjoy! (The USA rocket is mine. The double pink star space ship is my 4 year old daughter’s work.)

We also sang some fun galactic songs and read some out-of-this world books! Here are a few of the Astronaut Books we read:

I Want to Be an Astronaut (Ages 0-3), by Byron Barton, is a simple description of what astronauts do on a space mission.  The bold colors and heavy cartoon-style outlines will catch the attention of young children.

Space Boy (Ages 3-6) by Leo Landry is a sweet tale of a boy who decides to escape the noise of his neighborhood with a picnic on the moon. He enjoys the adventure but misses his family and pet.  So, he returns to Earth in time for for bed.

Astronaut Piggy Wiggy (Ages 0-3) by Christuan and Diane Fox is a funny take that will get toddlers excited about space exploration. There is not a lot of factual information for older children but the authors do fit in a few key ideas: there is a countdown to liftoff, the objects float, astronauts require training for the controls, they wear space suits and make repairs on their ship. A warning for purists: Piggy Wiggy finds alien creatures on a distant planet.

More space books and songs coming soon!

I am sharing this as part of stART — check out more story + ART!