Looking for something for the kids to do while at home? There’s plenty of things to find online, but things are just so much more fun when there’s a theme to the day! Whether you’re planning a space party, an at home summer camp to prevent the summer slide, or just need a few fun activities to try while you’re staying at home, try out a few of the activities below. Pick one from each category or mix and match – whatever works for you!
WHAT TO WATCH
First off, there’s quite a few space videos out there for kids (Wall-E. Star Wars, Star Trek, Apollo 13, etc…). We tried to show them a few that were a bit older or not as well known to give them that ‘new’ or ‘wow’ factor. Here are a few that grabbed my kids attention:
- These were some movies we watched just for fun:
- Space Dogs: This one is actually a Russan animated film about two dogs in space.
- Fly Me to the Moon. This is an animated version of Apollo 11 where the main characters are flies.
- With everyone at home during the pandemic, there’s been plenty of people posting videos of books read aloud. While, this is never a replacement for reading to your child, this did give them a few minutes of entertainment during the day:
- Storytime from Space – my kids particularly liked this site as the space themed books are actually read by astronauts in space! They were very impressed.
- Papa Please Get me to the Moon (Hungry Caterpillar Series).
- On the educational side:
- Solar System 101: National Geographic (Youtube)
- Phases of the Moon (Generation Genius)
- How the Inner Solar System Formed (pbslearningmedia.com)
- Meet the Planets (pbslearningmedia.com)
FOOD CRAFTS & SNACKS
If your kids are like mine, they’ll eat food they prepare for themselves way more readily than if I make them. Here are a few that were fun and easy for them to put together:
- Space Rockets. We used bananas for the body of the rocket, cut strawberries for the wings, and cuties for the fire underneath the rocket.
- Solar System. Definitely not to scale or in the correct order but at least they got the planets on the plate! We used anything circular: cuties, ritz crackers, mini cucumber slices, cheese sticks. We also ordered Vegetable Cutter Shapes to make the stars out of cheese but not a requirement at all.
- There were a couple other fun ideas we did find online but didn’t get to them. Here are a few links in case you wanted a few more fun food ideas:
- Oreo Phases of the Moon (www.sciencebob.com)
- Alien Head (www.creativekidsnacks.com)
EDUCATIONAL GAMES (Online and Printable)
If your little kiddos are in the mood for a little bit of learning and fun, try out a few of these online games:
- Space Play (nasa.gov). Play a few online space games from Nasa themselves!
- Mindy’s Constellation Exploration (pbslearningmedia.org). This online game has kids connect the dots to make a constellation.
- Moon Landing Game (pbs.org). This is a printable board game about space flight.
- Hubble Space Telescope (nasa.gov). Explore the universe through the eyes of the Hubble telescope.
- Palomar Observatory. Take a virtual tour of the Palomar Observatory
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. Here are a few outer space theme: (Books start off for younger crowds and move upward). Barnes & Nobles also had an article of Kids Books, which had some good ones in there: 9 Books for Kids Excited about the Total Solar Eclipse
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: Outer Space, Astronaut, Rocket, Telescope, etc…
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices.
- If you could travel to the moon, what would you bring to help set up your living space?
- Imagine you could visit another planet, where would you go and what would it be like?
- If you could discover something with a super powerful telescope, what would you find?
CRAFTS
If your kids are anything like mine, they LOVE crafts – (mostly, I think, for making the mess 🙂 ). Here are few that we worked on during our space week and were pretty easy to handle. Now, you can really use any fruit or snacks you have, we just had these on hand
- Build a rocket ship with any spare package or large cardboard boxes you have lying around the house. Your kids can use crayons, markers, or paint to draw computers and keypads!
- Playdoh solar system, anyone? Grab some colored play doh, make some 2D circles or spheres and create the planets! If you don’t have play doh, construction paper works too!
- Create a Hallway Solar System Display: Solar System Scale Model (theowlteacher.com). We luckily had a somewhat bare hallway in the house and ended up creating a scaled down version of the solar system. It was eye opening for the kids – to compare the spaces between the earth and moon with all the other planets.
- The Adler Planetarium in Chicago has a printable celestial zoo coloring book as well as a “flat astronaut”: Adler Planetarium Online Resources. They also have some videos that were interesting to my older children.
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home play / summer camp guide! If you enjoyed this article, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other At Home Play Ideas or Outer Space Fun!
Happy Planning!
