An Outstanding Out of this World Space Week – Our Sensational Solar System

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 this day, we learned all about the solar system by reading some fun fact books, watching some educational videos, making some easy crafts, and performing some stem activities!  Read through to check out the day!

A TYPICAL DAY

All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂   But the gist of our day is having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon.  Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂

INTRO

Most kids are likely familiar with space, the solar system, and some basic concepts.  But it may be fun to talk about some things they already know or may be curious about. 

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:  

FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS

What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack???  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! 

We found this Solar System idea from kidscreativesnacks.com.  It’s a super cute way to get the kiddos excited about eating healthy while learning – they get to create a solar system using fruits & veggies.  We weren’t too worried about accuracy here as it would’ve been tough to get measurements correct, but they still have TONs of fun picking different fruit for each planet and/or moon!

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 books of the day, we had quite an age range – the first is a cute book with the Cat in the Hat.  The next few may be more difficult for younger kids to read on their own but they’re very informative. 

  • There’s No Place Like Space! By Tish Rabe
  • 13 Planets by David A Guilar
  • Where is Our Solar System? By Stephanie Sabol

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, SUN, MOON, PLANET

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.  This was our writing prompt of the day but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!

  • If you could create a make-believe planet, what would you call it and what would it be like to live on it?

CRAFT

If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic.  While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning! 

We actually had two crafts for the day as they were both pretty easy (and low-mess!).   The first was a giant sticker sheet where the kiddos could create the ‘solar system’ using stickers.  The second was a mobile from the Dollar Tree (arguably not the most stable mobile but it’s a nice little craft that can hold up for a few days of space week 🙂

STEM ACTIVITY

While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math!  These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!

For our STEM activity, we also had two relatively easy activities.  The first was a spinner from the Dollar Tree – you can spin the paper wheel to focus on a planet and you’ll see how far the planet is from the sun and the average temperature.  It’s a nice little interactive way to get some quick facts and do some comparison.  

We had also planned to create Play Doh Planets from the schoolsobservatory.org; however, the kiddos ended up creating ‘not-to-scale’ models.  They did, however, make all the planets and place them in order, so we counted it as a win 🙂

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!