The space birthday party for our little friend Kealin was such a success mostly due to the fun STEM space party activities that we had to keep the kids busy while we celebrated.
You can totally pull a STEM party off, but it does require a little bit of advanced planning. There are bits and pieces to buy for the projects for multiple kids and you also have to account for the time that you have to spend on the projects at the party. Affliate links ahead; they cost you nothing and help keep this content free!
Space Party Activities — Organization
This is part of where planning comes in. For STEM party, make sure you have enough space where you can set up separate stations for the kids to do their projects. If you have help, two areas is plenty. For our space party, we used a dining room table and a 6 foot folding table (buy one here) to accommodate our STEM party projects.
To make all this organization more fun for the kids, we also gave them a list of things they would do at the party cleverly disguised as a passport for their space training. You can purchase the template as a PDF file here along with the signs for each station.
As the kids made their way through the STEM project stations, they got a space sticker (buy them here) to show each project was complete.
Space party activity sheet
At the beginning of parties, kids tend to mill around and not know what to do with themselves because they are waiting for all of the party goers to show up. To give them a little bit of purpose in those first 10 or 15 minutes of a party, I like to have activity sheets for the kids to work on.
Ours was space themed to match the party. Buy the PDF here. After everyone shows up, move the kids to the first space STEM project, and don’t forget to give them a sticker on their passports!
How to make Space slime
Slime is still wildly popular with the 5 to 11 year old crowd. We made slime fit our space theme with a couple of clever little details.
Glitter glue made slime sparkly like the stars. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can easily add in confetti stars and larger glitter pieces to make this slime even more spacey and spectacular.
Get disposable plastic bowls or bowls you don’t really care about for each member of the party to make their slime in. Add in your glitter glue, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and start with a tablespoon of contact solution. Stir your concoction. If the slime is still sticky add a tablespoon at a time of contact solution until the slime is no longer sticky.
You want to package up space sign in a way that the kids can easily take it home. We love these clear plastic ornaments (buy them here) to put the slime in. It made the bulbs look like little planets when the slime was in them. To make sure the bulbs stay closed until the next use or at least when they get home, add a piece of tape to the seam and tie the top shut with a ribbon. Bonus points if you add a tag to the top with a planet name! These tags are part of the space printable set in my Etsy shop.
Space stem party mars rover scribble bots
This was probably the most popular activity at the party. The kids in attendance had never put together circuits before, so it was a fun learning activity for them as well. This project does require quite a bit of adult help so make sure you have enough helpers or are willing to spend a lot of time on making the Scribble bots if you take them on.
I have a full tutorial on scribble bots in this post — click here to read.
Materials:
- Solo cup
- 4 thin markers (buy them here)
- Clear packing tape (buy it here)
- Single battery holder with wires (buy it here)
- 1.5 volt hobby motor (buy it here)
- AA battery (buy them here)
- Googly eyes, pom poms, other decoration
- Glue stick-thick ones work best (buy them here)
For party use, roll out sheets of white butcher paper fight here and tape them to the floor to let the scribble box loose to run around and draw. This will be the highlight of the party for them I promise!
Plan on a good half an hour for this project.
Space stem party activity rocket launch
We all make some party mistakes every once in a while. For this party this was one of them. We’ve done rocket launches like this at many other events in our area (we live right by the Kennedy space Center, we are big into STEM!) but I failed to do a run through on this activity before I showed help with party.
In theory, and air compressor, some PVC, and rolled that paper is all you need to make “rockets” and launch them. I am going to point you in the direction of a tutorial that really does it right all the way through to do this particular party activity. Click here to see a stomp rocket tutorial straight from NASA!
Spacey moon jump
Yes, I know not exactly a stem project. This was our backup plan in case everything else went toes up. Having an activity that burns a little sugar and energy off at the end of the party is a good idea anyway. We called it the space jump to make it fit into our space themed party.
Other space party activity ideas
There are tons of things you can do to fit into a space themed sort of party. Here are a few tutorials tonight hit to get ideas for projects to do at your party!
maggy, red ted art
Monday 25th of June 2018
AWWWW these are all so fun! What a great space party! Thanks for including our snowglobes!