Destination: Space by Christopher Englert and Tom Clohosy Cole
This book is fantastically amazingly wonderful! It is an oversize nonfiction book all about space. The illustrations are bold and beautiful with a lot of facts and information packed onto each page. It is done in a way that is pretty easy to understand and is organized well. All the details and information on each page is enough to keep your star-struck kiddos busy for quite a while.
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My child is more than a bit star-stuck. He is obsessed with the change from day to night and loves to look at the moon and stars. A lot of his favorite books are centered around the moon and space and he insists that every airplane in the sky isn’t an airplane at all, despite what I tell him. They are all rocket ships! With his love for space and the inspiration from this gorgeous book I couldn’t help but throw together a companion craft.
Space Craft
This craft is one that is super simple and can have a fun “wow” effect at the end. I also love that it doesn’t use a lot of supplies- winning!
Supplies needed:
- paint quality paper
- water color paints
- white acrylic paint
- paint brushes
- scissors
- small spray bottle
- cardboard box
- glue stick
To start I really would recommend getting paint quality paper. Watercolor paper would probably be best, but I used acrylic paint paper because it was what I had on hand and it worked great. You will want painting paper because you will want to cover the entire sheet of paper with a few layers of paint and all the water will warp your paper if you don’t have something sturdy.
So, with your hefty paper paint using the colors blue, black and purple to cover the entire sheet of paper. You can mix the colors as you go or even layer colors on top of each other. I found that I liked painting a layer of black over my paper after my first hodgepodge layer was done. Then you let it dry completely.
TIP: I’m usually not to picky about the colors my toddler uses, but I really wanted this project to have the effect of the dark sky so instead of trying to explain what colors I wanted him to use and then watch him as he painted, I opted to use thick masking tape over the colors I didn’t want him using for this project. (As you can see in the photo above) It worked brilliantly and when we were done I simply pulled the tape off and no harm to my paint was done.
While the sky background is drying you can paint the planets paper. For this sheet we used warm colors: orange, yellow, and red. However, having more of a variety for the planets would have also been fun. I let my toddler paint his warm colors in reckless abandon (It always works wonderfully for him in the end! ) and I chose to paint mine in strips so that my planets were more striped/layered.
After both pages are dry you are ready for the second step for each one. With your space sky paper you are going to add some “stars”. To create this effect you put some white acrylic paint in an inexpensive plastic spray bottle and thin it out with a bit of water. Afterwards you spray the thinned white paint on your night sky to create specks of white that look like stars. This is the step that toddlers are most likely to love. Just sayin’.
TIPS: I put the papers in the bottom of a box when we did this to contain any stray flecks of paint. Also, I sprayed the first few sprays on an extra piece of paper so that it was all primed when I was ready to spray our projects. My toddler sprayed his sheet quite a bit so he got more of a mottled affect. I sprayed mine just twice and got more of the flecked galaxy look. Both turned out great. (The one in both photos below was mine.)
Now you are ready to finish the planet sheet. All you need to do is choose some circular objects you have laying around your house that are the size you want your planets to be. Then you trace the circles, cut them, and you are good to go.
Using the glue stick glue your planets on your galaxy paper and you are done! I love this project because you really don’t have to worry about perfection. “Sloppy” turns beautiful and unique as you go and the end result is really quite lovely. My toddler is SO proud of his space picture and I love how excited he was to show his dad when he came home. It is one that I think will have to stay up on the fridge for quite a while. That is a place of honor in our home after all!
If you give this Beyond the Book activity a try I’d love to hear how it goes! Share it on Instagram using hashtag #beyondthebook (I’m on Instagram as @book.nerd.mommy) or even just comment here with your thoughts. It would make my day! Or to simply save for later pin the image below.
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