Have you heard of the Astronomy Club? It is a very popular manifestation of my son’s imagination. It includes himself, his cousins, and anyone else willing to play along for the day. The only rule is that you have to love astronomy. Welcome to the club!
We started planning this party well over a year ago … actually it was 2 days before his last birthday, (a bit too late for mommy to change gears). He wanted a realistic space party, not pretend rockets with green aliens, but space shuttles and planets.
The best part of having a year and two days to plan a party is that you have time to look around for fun activities and there are lots of opportunities to get great deals on your supplies. We found a fun cardboard space shuttle on black friday that we enjoyed coloring ourselves, it received a lot of attention on party day.
We created quite a buzz among my son’s guests by sending out invitations written on shuttle gliders. Everyone loves getting a toy in the mail! And really, isn’t half the fun of being invited to a party simply looking forward to it?
My kids love to get involved in planning their own parties, so these design-your-own solar system stickers were a fun way to create gift bags.
While we waited for all of the guests to arrive I set up a few simple activities outdoors. The boys loved taking their turn launching stomp-rockets, and at our “orbit the earth” station kids threw a hula-hoop over an inflatable globe.
As with most kids, my son wasn’t interested in just decorating the party with a space theme, he wanted to BE an astronaut. So the highlight of his party was a guided pretend activity in which I (over-dramatically) walked the kids through their own adventure story and had them act it out. They had to lie on the ground with their feet up for our “launch,” cover their ears and jostle about as the engines engaged, and float as they entered zero gravity.
Once in space they had to accomplish their mission – to repair a satelite. They donned sock “gloves” and worked together to re-assemble nuts and bolts of different sizes.
We also had an astronomy mission where the kids needed to map the big dipper. We used glow in the dark stars and a double checked their work with shot from google images to make sure that their map was accurate.
After our pretend game, the kids settled in for craft time where they painted and assembled their own space shuttles (only $1 each from Michaels craft store). This was a bit messy, so we used a black plastic drop cloth decorated with star stickers as our tablecloth. It made for very easy clean-up.
Eating like an astronaut was the kids next space activity – we packaged everything in plastic and labeled it with our own pretend government-issue names and numbers. The adults all got a kick out of this part. Tang was obviously the drink of choice for our astronauts.
Tableware had to be very utilitarian – this is the US government after all. We used white paper plates and plain plastic ware, but we added a cute feature that all of the kids loved. Each plate had an elastic band hooked to one edge so that their silverware wouldn’t float away (we were still on our mission after all).
I made a simple moon shaped cake (just wait until the frosting is partially dry and dent it with your finger – very, very simple) and served freeze-dried ice-cream. The ice-cream was fun, but most of the kids decided that they like the real stuff better.
All of the astronauts returned safely to earth with fun memories of their time in space.
Mission accomplished.
Gliders and stickers from Oriental Trading
Color your-own Space Shuttle playhouse from Discovery Kids
Shuttle craft from Michaels