Early years: learning about space through play

Space play

Recently we have been doing theme weeks to support our learning at home. My 6 year old was in awe as we watched the recent Space X launch so we decided on a space theme. Using something the kids are interested in makes learning fun for all of us.

Space art & craft

Art and crafts is not my strong point so it was Twinkl to the rescue again (I am going to miss the free Twinkl access). The space rocket was really easy to cut out and put together and my son was so pleased with his creation.

Learning about space
Paper craft rocket

The shape rockets below were good for both boys, my 4 year old was having great fun with his pritt stick.

Messy & Sensory play

I try to include some sensory and messy play as much as we can. For our space theme my son helped me use food colouring with some pearl barley to create our moon rocks. Some coloured sand, stars and a few toys and we had our moon messy play.

Nursery rhyme time

For our music sessions we focused on a few space themed nursery rhymes:

  • Twinkle twinkle little star
  • Hey diddle diddle
  • Five little men in a flying saucer
Space music
Space themed music

Space story time

My kids love Ten Little Aliens so we did several activities with this one including counting and commenting with PECS.

Aliens Love Underpants is another great story your kids will love. Over the week we also enjoyed Shark in the Park and played with our own telescopes searching for the moon.

Getting attention

The key to learning is always having your child’s attention. One way to get their attention is to use their interests. My son is a LEGO fan so this rocket we have in a LEGO set was an ideal activity.

LEGO rocket
LEGO rocket

Each morning we do an Attention Autism session, the bucket was filled with rockets and things that can fly. For our attention builder we used some star shapes and a flour shaker to maker our flour stars.

Flour stars
flour stars

Another attention builder was using glue and glitter to create our galaxy pictures.

galaxy art
glitter galaxy

This might be our last theme week for a while as the boys are back at school and pre-school next week. I am looking forward to having a break from home schooling but we will pick it up again in the Summer break.

If you found this useful you might be interested in my other early learning topics:

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