Rockets & Spacecraft Unit for Early Learners

A Rockets & Spaceships Family-Style Unit Study for Homeschooling Families with Preschool to Early Elementary Students

This rockets and spacecraft unit study is for family-style learning in the Charlotte Mason style of Language Arts and History, with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) hands-on learning.

In this Rockets and Spacecraft Unit Study, your preschool to second grade kids will learn about different spacecraft such as the space shuttle, Apollo, the International Space Station; rhyming words and onomatopoeia; how to make a balloon rocket; all about the Mars Rover; Katherine Johnson and her work at NASA; and much more!

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Rockets & Spacecraft English Language Arts

Living Picture Books

Armstrong by Torben Kuhlmann is a lovely story of a mouse who is fascinated by the moon. He soon learns more about the moon and technology and develops a dream of someday going to the moon. This book is very long for a picture book, so you’ll probably want to break it into chunks for younger kids. However, the illustrations are spectacular and the author seamlessly weaves history into the storyline, making it a great selection for all the kids in your family.

Rocket-Bye Baby: A Spaceflight Lullaby by Danna Smith is a sweet night-time lullaby for young children. This book describes how a mother and child could stargaze together, watch meteors pass, and blow kisses to the moon as they travel through space.

Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover by Markus Motum Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 and captured the world’s fascination with the images it sent back from the Red Planet.

For your Early Elementary kiddos: Earthrise: Apollo 8 and the Photo That Changed the World by James Gladstone A story about the picture the Apollo 8 astronauts took of the Earth from their spacecraft that united the world during a time of civil unrest.

Independent Readers

In order of difficulty:

Non-fiction:

Spaceships and Rockets: Relive Missions to Space (DK Readers Level 2)

DK Super Readers Level 2 Spaceships and Rockets

Mars: Explore the mysteries of the Red Planet (Space Explorers)

Fiction:

Let Me Off This Spaceship by Gery Greer. Also on Open Library

Read Aloud

Adventures Beyond the Solar System: Planetron and Me by Geoffrey Williams is available on Kindle and Audible, or look on Amazon for used copies as it’s out of print. This sequel to Adventures in the Solar System: Planetron and Me is a wholesome story of a young boy whose toy rocket becomes a real spaceship that takes him into outer space where he learns about astronomy.

Alternatively, if you have older kids reading the Wrinkle in Time series from the Upper Elementary or Middle to High School instructions, then have everyone enjoy the same read aloud books.

Folktale

This week’s folktale comes from Venezuela and has been told by the Warao tribe for generations. Listen to The Owner of the Sun on Circle Round Podcast. You can print out a coordinating coloring sheet to color while listening here. Discussion questions are also included at the same link.

Writing

Owl and Wormy: Bright Lights and Starry Nights by Andy Runton is a wordless picture book perfect for making up their own story. Have your early elementary kids dictate a story to you based on the book.

Grammar and Handwriting

If your family uses narration as a way to learn grammar, grab a copy of the Galaxies, Galaxies Narration worksheet from the Free Resource

For the narration pages, select the passage that best matches your child’s writing and spelling abilities. Then, read the passage to your student all the way through first. Then read it again, 2 or 3 words at a time, giving them time to write it down. Tell them to do their best, but not to get “caught up” in making sure it’s all spelled correctly while they are writing. They can go back when they are done to fix any spelling if they want.

When they are done, give them the original page (that you read off of) and let them “check” it and fix any spelling or punctuation mistakes. Talk to them about any spelling or punctuation rules that they used, just to help cement it in their brains. It’s really important for them to check it, not you. It seems to give them ownership of it and makes them remember the correction.

Use the Rockets & Spacecraft Copywork Worksheets in the Free Resource Library to practice grammar and handwriting. There are 3 pages in 3 different levels for early elementary, upper elementary, and middle/high school. The early elementary and upper elementary levels come in both print and cursive.

Phonemics & Language Development

Owl and Wormy: Bright Lights and Starry Nights by Andy Runton is a wordless picture book perfect to get little ones talking and making up their own story. Take turns and let everyone in the family tell their version of the story. Parents, be sure to model using dialogue (where the characters talk to each other) and not just telling the story as a narrator. Not only will this help them as writers later on, but also helps them to develop empathy and the ability to see things from other’s viewpoints.

After reading Zoom, Rocket, Zoom by Margaret Mayo or Roaring Rockets by Tony Mitton, go back through the book and see if your child can find the rhyming word sets.

Then ask your child to come up with more words, even nonsense words, that rhyme, such as: light, bright, might, kite, bite, sight, etc.

If they have trouble coming up with rhyming words, help them go through the alphabet, putting each sound in front of the word ending. For example, b+ ite, d+ite, f+ite.

Working on these tasks helps with the phonemic awareness tasks of segmenting and rhyming.

Learn about onomatopoeia in this Galactic Radio audiobook video. Onomatopoeia are words that make the sound they represent. For example, thunk or zoom, are sounds that objects make, and moo and oink are sounds that animals make.

Learn more about phonemic awareness and why it’s so important in this post. Our family loves to work on rhyming words while we’re driving in the car (it’s a sneaky way to get in some school time while they are a captive audience and helps to pass the time).

Look up all of the books for this unit study in my Amazon Storefront Astronomy to Astronauts Book List

Rockets & Spacecraft STEAM

Science

Watch this video about the space shuttle from Things That Go TV

Make a balloon rocket with string, a balloon, and a straw; use these instructions from Mombrite.

Technology

Create a Mission Control station with the printable in the Rockets and Spacecraft Unit Study bundle for dramatic play time. If you can get your hands on a large appliance box, turn it into an Apollo spaceship or space shuttle. Let your kids loose with the crayons and print the command module printable for your little astronauts.

My kids love to use an old set of headphones with a microphone leftover from their older sister’s Rosetta Stone Spanish to talk to mission control.

Your kids can build your own Mars Rover with these instructions from Rainy Day Mum.

Engineering

Use the Identify the Spacecraft cards that come in 3 levels (found in the Rockets and Spacecraft Unit Study Bundle) to learn the names of common spacecraft. Your kids may want to have 2 copies to play a memory style game, or use them to help them build a spacecraft with LEGOs.

Build rockets, moon rovers, an Earth, the sun and moon, or even a replica of the American flag planted on the moon with Duplos or other building blocks. For preschoolers needing extra practice with counting backwards, have them build a tower with 10 blocks and then take one off as they count down to zero.

Build an Apollo replica with items from your recycle bin. Wash out some tin cans and add some bolts and magnets and let your kids’ imagination soar. Or let them use construction paper shapes to build a rocket on a piece of black construction paper. Or make a 3D rocket from a paper tube with these Rocket Craft instructions.

Or use these Build a Spacecraft directions from NASA to create a spacecraft or satellite from a juice box and other recycled items.

Your kids will be amazed watching this Starship video about the of the first time SpaceX successfully caught the heavy booster.

Fine Arts

Our morning basket always has one of the Come Look with Me books by Gladys S. Blizzard in it. I think my kids love them because they feel like there aren’t any “wrong” answers to the open-ended questions when studying the paintings.

The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh is on pages 14-15 of the Exploring Landscape Art with Children book of the Come Look with Me series. In addition to the questions, each painting has a short biography of the artist.

Create some van Gogh inspired finger painting with this project from The Imagination Tree.

Alternatively, you could use up some broken crayons with this Starry Night re-creation from Happy Hooligans.

Math

Jack Hartman is our favorite YouTube children’s singer. In this rocket-themed video, he counts down from 10 to Blast Off! Also, check out some of Jack Hartman’s brain breaks videos when you need to get your kids movin’ and groovin’ a bit to improve their focus.

Rockets & Spacecraft History

Counting on Katherine by Helaine Becker is a biography of a humble, gifted woman who was an integral mathematician at NASA. She not only calculated the trajectory for Shepard’s first space flight but also saved Apollo 13 with her calculations. Be sure to read the “More About Katherine” section at the back of the book too.

Another great book about Katherine Johnson for early learners is A Computer Called Katherine by Suzanne Slade. We found this book at our library in a “Wonderbook” edition, which reads the book to you. This book discusses not only what she did for NASA, but also the “glass ceilings” that she broke.

Rockets & Spacecraft Extras

Sensory bins are an important tool to promote your child’s development of fine motor skills, language, self-regulation, and so much more. Check out this article that details why sensory bins are worth the messy factor.

This outer space sensory bin starts with glow-in-the-dark aquarium gravel in an aluminum foil roasting pan. (I used a 5–pound bag of gravel in the largest roasting pan that the dollar store had). Add in some astronauts and spaceships like this set or this set.

Grab a playground-sized ball or large balloon and turn your body into a Rocket Launcher. Lay on your back with your knees folded up to your chest. Place the ball or balloon (the rocket) on your feet. Count down from 10 and kick your legs straight up into the air when you get to “blast off!”.

Your young learners can practice their pre-writing and handwriting skills with this free printable space activity pack from our friends over at The Art Kit.

If your kids are into Playmobil or Imaginext, both toy lines have great selections of space-themed toys and astronaut figures.

My kids love the Melissa and Doug reusable sticker sets (like the old ColorForms) to create scenes for imaginative play. The adventure set contains outer space along with wild west, pirates, medieval and ocean sets. These sets last a long time and are super inexpensive, too!

NASA’s 3-2-1 Liftoff Guide for Educators is filled with STEM + Language Arts lessons and hands-on activities for additional activities for your unit.

Rockets & Spacecraft Devotions

Our family loves the devotional book Indescribable: 100 Devotions About God and Science by Louie Giglio! These five-minute devotions are filled with wondrous facts about God’s amazing creation.

The following devotions match up nicely with this week’s rockets and spacecraft study: pages

• 48-49
• 52-53
• 54-55
• 74-75
• 96-97

Be sure to follow my Pinterest board Astronomy and Astronauts for more great ideas for your Rockets and Spacecraft unit study!

Don’t forget to pin this post so you can refer back to it during your Rockets and Spacecraft unit study.

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