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My twins have been O-B-S-E-S-S-E-D with the planets and outer space since last summer, when their awesome teacher did an entire lesson on the subject. They made their own planet matching games and worked on fine motor skills by cutting the planets out with scissors and learned interesting facts about each planet. My son, Jake, has been particularly interested in planets since last summer, and he asks Google Home questions about each planet on a daily basis. During our car rides to and from school, he tells me things that I don’t know about each planet; its weather, its distance from other planets, and what its made of.
When this month’s Kid Night In Box arrived and I saw the outside was space themed, I knew they would love it. The box is carefully curated with fun activities related to the space theme. The monthly newsletter has all of the instructions for each activity, including recipes for Galaxy Strawberries and Hot Rockets (hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls). The box comes with a book to read with your junior astronauts, as well as a printout of two astronaut cut outs for them to color in and attach to the included white paper bags to create puppets for use during the story.
This month’s book is Astronaut Living in Space, by Kate Hayden. It teaches children all about astronauts and their journeys in space. The newsletter includes great stopping points for grades pre-k through 1st grade and grades 2 through 5, with great thought-provoking questions to ask while reading.
Not only did the kids get to make their astronaut puppets, but there was a second art project in the box encouraging children to draw their own rocket ships. There’s a blue piece of paper and stickers of the planets to decorate, as well as a package of colored pencils to be used to draw the rocket as well as color in the astronaut cutouts. They even provided a roll of tape for assembly! You know I’m all about fine motor skills activities, so I loved that there were multiple projects that encouraged use of scissors, coloring, and tape!
Since we are avid therapy attendees, I love activities that not only incorporate fine motor skills, but gross motor skills as well! I was pleasantly surprised to see a pack of yoga cards that have yoga positions with space themed names like crescent moon and sun. On the back of each card there are facts about the planets, stars, meteors, and other out of this world things. This exercise is designed to show the children how important it is for astronauts to be in great physical shape, while encouraging them to partake themselves! This box covered both fine motor and gross motor bases this month, and hit a home run in my book.
In addition to working on fine and gross motor skills, this box does a great job of engaging all five senses. The box contains a package of astronaut ice cream-it’s a freeze-dried ice cream sandwich that allows kids to taste the food that astronauts eat in space.
The next activity in the box is rocket testing. This requires lots of fun fine motor skills to accomplish. You have to tie thread to a chair, lace it through a straw, and tie the other end to a nearby sturdy item. You then have to blow up a balloon and pinch it instead of tying it, because it will ultimately be launched like a rocket from the string/straw launcher. It’s a bit tricky to conceive, and I think a visual drawing in the newsletter would have been a bit more helpful, but the kids had fun nonetheless.
The box included a package of plastic glow in the dark star stickers for parents to place around the house for their young astronomers to seek out with the included telescope. Children are encouraged to decorate the telescope with stickers and the included colored pencils and then star gaze at home.
The newsletter included seven missions for the kids to complete, it definitely kept them busy! The final two missions were to complete their planet passport and build a rocket. Jake recognized the planets from his vast knowledge and quickly took to labeling them in the passport without assistance. The Kids Night In box contained a rocket drawn on the inner cover for kids to cut out and then assemble. Once complete, we filled out their astronaut training certificate and my little space lovers were tuckered out from all of the fun in this month’s box!
This box was packed to the gills with tons of activities that exercised fine and gross motor skills for a wide variety of ages and ability levels. I love that it incorporated lots of opportunities for art, as well as physical exercise and educational material. It included everything you could possibly need, the only thing I found myself needing to dig out were scissors.
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Tamar Blazer is an attorney-turned-twin mom, with a passion for her family, friends, writing, good food, home decor and laughing. When she’s not lamenting on her lack of sleep, you can find her doing one of the too many projects she likes to take on, usually with a twin on either side.
