On the final day of space camp, I started by holding out a bowl of eggs. “These may look like eggs, but they’re actually astronauts on their way back to Earth, and it’s your job to keep them safe!” I gave them free reign over the remaining recycling odds and ends from the day before (including their rolls of tape), with the only restriction being that they couldn’t use a pre-built box of any sort, everything had to be built by them. They sent over an hour refining their designs! G5 and B7 had successful drops, and we all had a laugh when G2’s astronaut bounced right out of her spaceship and cracked - she’d forgotten to give it a roof. I will definitely be bringing this activity back again at some point, but with more restrictions on available materials.

I usually let them be in charge of their own snacks. They collect the one or two items they’d like in the morning, and are able to eat it whenever they want throughout our camp time. Today, however, before we even left the house, I mentioned that we were going to learn a bit about how astronauts eat in space, and asked if they’d chosen their snacks wisely. I collected all their chosen snacks into a bag and said that just this once, we’d be eating together. While they were busy focusing on their egg drop experiment, I took a few moments to stick a bit of velcro on the backs of their snacks. I brought up a video of Chris Hadfield explaining the food situation on the ISS, and while they were watching, I rolled out a long strip of velcro on the table and stuck all their snacks to it. I also included a large-ish tupperware container for a trash can. Their challenge was to pretend they were in space while they were eating their snack - they’d have to make sure it was in their hand or velcroed to the table, otherwise it would float away! They looked a little skeptical, but started on their way. I was watching like a hawk for any slip-up, and soon enough, G2 set her wrapper down on the table, so I picked it up and started wandering away. She chased after me as soon as she noticed, and that’s when the fun really began! G5 and B7 had both chosen seaweed strips, which they had to make sure stayed in their container, and getting the lid off the trash can while keeping hold of their food and the wrapper was a challenge for everyone. G5 ended up becoming the designated runner as she would always be the first to notice anyone’s snack or wrapper drifting away and chase after it while laughing!

Following snack time, we made our nebulas. I showed them some pictures - I don’t think they’ve seen any before, because they were in awe! We did some of what I call “Rorschach style” painting because it gets all blobby. We folded our papers in half, globbed a bit of paint on one side, then folded it over so it had a mirror image pattern. We smushed the paint around while it was folded over to give it more of a “cloudy” effect like nebulas. Once they were dry, I offered each of the kids a couple of my space stickers to add a planet, spaceship, or astronaut to their nebula - stickers are a huge hit around these parts and they’d never seen my space ones before, so that was exciting for them!

Next, we made tiny rockets to launch off the ends of straws. It was a little finnicky for G5 and G2, but we got everyone going eventually! B7 even decided to just make his out of tape.

By this point it was lunchtime, bringing us to the end of space camp week! I told the kids it was all done, and they all got really quiet. B7 asked if I had one more activity planned that we hadn’t had time to do, and if they could please have a late lunch to squeeze in one more activity - which is how we ended up finishing off our week by making constellation viewers. I had the kids help me cover the ends with construction paper and tape, then I poked the holes. I made them the constellations I can always find the easiest, and only the most obvious stars from each to keep it simple for now. We ended up with the Big Dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia, and Cygnus.