How to Make Paper Cup Constellations

This week we’re celebrating Earth Day, which takes place on April 22. We’re not only learning about our planet Earth, but also about outer space, other planets, and the stars. Because don’t all kids love to learn about space? Even at age 1, Casey has been fascinated by the stars and the moon in the sky at night. This is bound to be a fun week!

Today’s topic, How to Make Paper Cup Constellations, is the perfect indoor, rainy day activity. With only a few basic supplies, your kids can design their own constellations and cast their stars onto walls. Here’s what you will need:

cup A paper cup. Just about any size will do! I had these left-over from our Arctic Animals week when we made Paper Cup Penguins. Remember those?!

A wooden skewer, a metal kabob skewer, or anything else similar with a relatively sharp tip.

And a small flashlight. That’s it!

We started by designing our constellations on the bottom of our paper cups. Gibbs showed me where he wanted his “stars.”

And then I used the sharp tip of the wooden skewer to poke a pattern of holes in the cups. Here is the constellation that Gibbs designed:

And here is the constellation that I made for Casey. The letter “C”!

The sky is the limit! You could get really fancy and make all sorts of designs with your stars. We obviously kept it very simple. As usual!

Once your holes are punched, the last step is to just put the cup on top of the flashlight, turn on the flashlight, and shine your “stars” onto a dark wall.

We had to close the blinds and shut the door in a bedroom so that it was dark enough to see, but it worked really well!

Casey watched Gibbs closely and tried to copy what he was doing, but in the end decided that it was just more fun to look at the stars from his Twilight Turtle. A little bit more age-appropriate, I guess!