Celebrate World Space Week with 5 fun activities

Celebrate World Space Week in your classroom with our fun space-themed activities. 

Space is a fascinating area to explore in a nursery environment. You could discuss how you might travel to space, incorporating small world and craft activities to help the children understand what they might find on their travels, discovering what the key differences are between earth and space – it’s a great idea to dedicate an area of your nursery to space exploration.

Try out our space themed activities below to help celebrate World Space Week!

A little lightbox fun

Spark their imagination with a lightbox and sprinkle glitter in a tray to represent the milky way or galaxy. Children will love to make marks with their fingers, creating stars, planets, rockets or even try to make your own constellations.

We also created a fun activity for children to sprinkle stars over the cut-out stars. They loved watching the cause and effect of releasing different stars over the black paper sky, creating their own constellation. 

What you will need:

tickit A2 Light Panel

A2 Black Sugar Paper 140gsm, Pack of 250 sheets

YPO Glitter Flakes, Assorted Primary Colours, 250g – Pack of 6

Create your own alien creatures and lunar landscape

Create a lunar landscape and let your little learners create their alien creatures with colourful playdough and craft materials. You could explore how the aliens will communicate and imagine how difficult it would be to move about the different textured landscapes.

What you will need:

Play-Doh, Assorted Colours - Pack of 4

Wrinkle Paper Shred – Pastel Colours

Fluorescent Sand - Pack of 6 x 350g

YPO Star Shaped Sequins, Silver – 90g Tub

Tinsel Pipe Cleaners, 150mm, Festive Colours – Pack of 100

White Polystyrene Balls 50mm Pack 10

Self Adhesive Acrylic Jewels

Fizzing space potions

This fun science activity can be adapted for a variety of different topics, but we’ve used blue powder paint and multi-coloured glitter flakes to give ours an intergalactic feel. Fill the jars half full of vinegar, then stir in a spoonful of powder paint and mix well. Add a generous squeeze of washing-up liquid and a spoonful of glitter flakes. Add a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda and give everything a stir and watch it fizz and froth over the sides. 

What you will need:

YPO Glitter Flakes, Assorted Primary Colours, 250g – Pack of 6

Powder Paint, 2.5kg, Blue

Bicarbonate of soda

Vinegar

Washing up liquid

Glass jars or small see-through containers

A tray or bowl to contain the mess

Space themed play tray

We used a variety of different materials and textures to create a space themed small world scene on one of our YPO play trays. We used a mirrored YPO play tray mat as a base and then added bubble wrap, foam packaging and scrunched up tin foil ‘space rocks’ to make our Luna landscape.

What you will need:

tickit Wooden Space Adventure - Pack of 10

YPO Play Tray - Black

YPO Play Tray Safety Mirror

Create galaxy space rocks

Children use everyday language to talk about size, weight, time and distance. Why not get them to create their own space rocks using an assortment of different stones or rocks? This is a fantastic opportunity to combine imagination through crafts and problem solving by sorting the rocks base on size, weight or shape.

Prepare the work space with white paper or splash mats. Ask the children to collect an assortment of different rocks from outdoors. Portion out Acrylic or Readymix Paints (we used Acrylic but Readymix will be more washable). Use a toothbrush to flick the paints onto the rocks. Leave to dry and you have your own Galaxy Space Rocks.

What you will need:

Natural Materials – Flat Pebbles 

YPO Ready Mixed Paint, Assorted Colours, 1 Litre Bottles – Pack of 12

YPO Ready Mixed Metallic Paint, Silver – 1 Litre Bottle

This article has been taken from one of our past editions of our Little Learners magazine. For more inspirational early years content like this, you can subscribe to receive our magazine for FREE or find out more on our Little Learners homepage.