Cardboard Space Ship

The children have been playing in this big box for a couple of weeks. It's been used for a variety of play experiences, but since we started our preschool theme for this month, SPACE, I decided to make it into a rocket.

I grabbed a pretty big Amazon box I had in the garage, and cut two triangles for the short ends. I then used a craft knife to score the edges about an inch from the edge to create a foldable line. This gave me a flange for joining the pieces together. The bottom flaps were turned under and taped down with packing tape [cheap.]  

The two side pieces for the point were joined at the top, then I simply laid the remaining rectangles of cardboard over the open sides and cut the pieces to fit before taping it all together.

To make it white, I knew paint would simply soak in and not look great, be expensive in the long run, and take time to do and dry. So I used the cheap, thin, white plastic table cloth you use for banquet tables. I had a roll hanging around. I simply sprayed an area with spray adhesive and applied it, trimming afterward. When complete, I covered the raw edges with duct tape from the dollar store. 

I added some pieces of black Gorilla Tape and some blue painter's tape for accents. I printed out a Google image for the flag.

It was a must-have!

For the thrusters, I used 2 red bowls from the dollar store that I just put on with doubled over duct tape. I took a sheet each of yellow, orange and red tissue paper, tied them together with a twist tie, added doubled over duct tape to the inside of the cup, and pressed it in. I snipped the ends of the tissue paper to be pointed where any was straight.

For the window, I had this piece of packaging plastic laying around that seemed to have some interesting features to it. I cut out the area and sealed the edges with duct tape. I used the cut out for their instrument panel.

I simply drilled holes in the lids and block so they could actually move, and attached a triangular cardboard brace to the back after sealing the edges with duct tape.

After our paintings dried, they could put these up above the instrument panel to act as their windshield.

We added a chair to the cock pit, and....TA DA! We have a space ship! For about an hour of work and about $2 in materials for tape and tablecloth. 

They think it's pretty spectacular.

This is our current favorite video, 
original lyrics by Snow Patrol...

Tags: space, theme, unit, preschool, rocket, shuttle, spaceship, NASA, astronaut, cardboard, play, environment, pre-k, elementary, school, education, planets, earth, sun, moon, stars,

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