“When are we going to go up to outer space?” This is the question that my inquisitive 4 year old has been asking me lately. Of course we can’t take a literal trip to space- but we can take an imaginative one! And the teacher brain in me went crazy with the fun possibilities of creating an outer space “feel”. Like making a rocket ship and traveling to our own version of outer space. When I heard that there was a Space Day the first friday in May I jumped aboard and made our space visit a reality! I thought I would share some of our fun explorative activities. If your child is interested- set a date and go on an exciting trip to outer space – or just use some of these ideas in a Space Unit.

You can’t go wrong with space books. As you can see we have a variety of genres- from non-fiction to science fiction!

My daughter and I made our very own rocket ship out of Ikea bookshelf boxes. Our rocket is tall enough for me and provided lots of space for painting and adding rainbow stickers (as requested from my Boo). My favorite part of this activity was hearing my daughter say “Will it REALLY fly to outer space Mom?”

my little astronaut

our very own rocket ship

We took a quick trip down to the planetarium and walked on the moon! We also watched a planet movie in their dome theater (its pretty cool to see a movie on the ceiling).

Later that night we ate dinner in our star tent and played with rockets from the Dollar Tree.

We then had a glow in the dark space party! I put glow sticks in balloons and hung them from the ceiling in our basement. These made PERFECT planets. We hopped aboard our rocket ship and were traveling through space! My daughter had a special star glow stick (thanks again to our favorite dollar store) that shone the way.

Happy Teaching!