Writing About Space: Books to Make as a Class

Mars the Red Planet
photo © 2007 Jason | more info (via: Wylio)

Inspire your little authors to write adventures about space with these fantastic collaborative book ideas from Mrs. Beggs' Kindergarten. The prompts are super simple so we're certain your preschoolers will be up to the task! Not only will these projects provide printing practice and build vocabulary, they're a great introduction to working with others, will inspire the imagination, and offer a fantastic addition to the classroom library for years to come!

The Stars' Trip to Earth

After reading The Stars' Trip to Earth, a story about a group of stars who venture from space to explore several exciting places on Earth, invite your students to create their own story page. Have them brainstorm a list of fun places the star might like to visit, settling on one to illustrate and include in the class book. Before putting the book together, have each student present their page and tell the class why they think the star would enjoy visiting this location/place. If you can, try to find the places on a map for a geography component.

Preschool Went To The Moon

Using a rhyme she found at Lasting Lessons, Mrs. Beggs and her students wrote about their class trip to space where they saw the moon, the stars, and even Mars from the window of their shuttle. They then illustrated the pages to bind in a book. Each page included a personalized poem and a rocket with the student's picture in the window {along with their other drawings and decorations, of course!}.

Solar System Hide & Seek

We adapted this class book idea from Mrs. Beggs' "Where is the Sun Hiding?" - where students brainstormed and illustrated where they thought the sun might hide. Instead of focusing on the sun, bring in all types of celestial bodies {so your students can brush up on their vocabulary} for a fun game of hide and seek. Here's an non-exhaustive list of "players".

  • A meteor
  • A black hole
  • A star
  • The moon
  • The sun
  • Mercury
  • Venus
  • Mars
  • Jupiter
  • Saturn
  • Uranus
  • Neptune
  • An asteroid
  • A comet

[NOTE: Earth is not included because the premise of the book is that these astronomical objects came to Earth to play a game of hide and seek.]

Make sure each student has an object to "hide", inviting them to illustrate a page for the book {i.e. "Mercury hid behind a horse.", etc}.

For more book ideas and space learning center activities, be sure to visit Mrs. Beggs' Classroom for her full post!