Welcome to our “Out of this World Space Week” series – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun themed activities on outer space! For our first day, we kept this very light and focused more on introducing the concept for the week with fun crafts, setting up our camp area, reading some fun fact books, and creating some galactic snacks! Read through to check out the day!
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
To get the kids into the space week theme, we decorated our camp area with two projects: a solar system and an upcycled rocket ship.
- Hallway Solar System – We found this idea on the owlteacher.com: 7 Options for Creating Solar System Scaled Models. We used Option 5 because it helped the kiddos visualize (in a “large scale way”) the sizes and distances. If you’ve got older children who have learned measurements, this is a great way for them to practice!
- Upcycled, Kid-Sized Rocket Ship – What’s better than playing with a toy rocket ship? Playing in one!!! You could purchase one of those cardboard ones that you assemble and color, but we created this rocket ship with a few items from home – it doubled as a craft where they could use their creativity and design AND as a rocket for their imaginative play!
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About Space (58m)
- Let’s Explore Space! Astronomy for Kids by SciShow Kids (20m)
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack time??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
For our snack of the day, we added in some yummy treats after our healthier snacks – cosmic brownies! The sprinkles aren’t in star or galaxy shape but after a quick search – these ‘cosmic’ treats apparently do have an ‘out of this world’ history: The History of America’s Sweeheart: Little Debbie. We also dyed some eggs in ‘galaxy theme’ – had a left over boxes from coloring Easter eggs, so why not! You could probably get a similar effect using some food dye and swirling the eggs in different colors 😉
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned!
For our intro to camp day, we picked a Time for Kids Book of Why – Stellar Space by Time for Kids. It’s a great non-fiction book with facts and pictures that would definitely interest kids looking for snippets and fun facts!
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: SPACE, SOLAR SYSTEM,
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.
For our intro camp day, we encouraged our kiddos to ‘think big’ and describe any part of space that interested them:
- If you could visit any part of space for a day, where would it be? What would you do? Would you take any souvenirs or pictures?
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home camp article! We hope this article has helped you and your little ones find the JOY in learning and/or maybe even inspired more ideas for you! If you enjoyed this post, 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 Outer Space Ideas or DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
