We traveled to space last month and learned all about the stars during our constellation study. Constellations have always been something I wanted to learn about, so I was thrilled to take this journey along with my kids! Here are the books, crafts, and exploration we did about constellations (and a free printable, too!)
Constellation Study
My kids were more than enthusiastic when I brought up learning about the stars. We have talked about space and the planets before, but constellations were only ever skimmed over. We had so much fun learning, creating, and exploring while studying the stars. So, let’s dive right in!
Constellation Books
We perused the library and Amazon for books about the stars and there are so many great choices! I narrowed it down to these three because I really wanted to focus on just constellations for this study.
Glow on the Dark Constellations is a book we’ve had lying around for a while. The kids love the glow in the dark stars and it shows off some of the most well known constellations.
The Sky is Full of Stars is a cute storybook that tells you how to find constellations, star brightness and colors, and much more. It’s a great addition to your book collection!
What We See in the Stars is absolutely beautiful. We found it at the library and I immediately added it to my Amazon cart! My kids have flipped through it numerous times, entranced each time. This book has beautiful illustrations, silver accents, and information on a ton of constellations!
Constellation Crafts
I can’t do a lesson without incorporating some type of craft! We did a few other star crafts, but this constellation embroidery fit in perfectly with our constellation study. It was awesome seeing my boys dive into this. Although I know the basics of sewing, I’ve never embroidered before in my life. This was a simple handicraft for us to pick up.
We just used chalk to mark out our constellations on the fabric and my 10 year old got to work on his own after some short instructions. I helped my 6 year old with his embroidery, and then had so much fun I got to work on my own! We loved how they turned out and we plan on hanging them in their bunk room in the RV.
Constellation App
An app that we love is called StarTracker. It’s free to add to your device (or you can choose to pay $.99 to get rid of ads). My kids have spent hours using the app and they were excited that we could use it for school (Shhh, don’t tell them that they’ve been learning on it all along!)
They had fun trying to find certain constellations in the sky. There have been some beautifully clear nights lately so it’s been awesome to get out and use it. We hope we are able to catch a get together with our local star gazing club to learn more from experts and hobbyists in the near future to get to look at the stars through a telescope! If you really want to study the stars, you can grab a high quality telescope, or add to the lesson even more with creating your own refracting telescope!
88 Northern Hemisphere Constellation Cards
I teamed up with my friend Kayleigh at Kayleigh Anne Studios to create these gorgeous constellation flashcards! She took the time to make me all 88 Northern Hemisphere constellations to add so that you can learn about all of the magnificent stars in our night sky.
I divided all of the constellations up by season to make them easier to reference when you’re going out to view the stars.
You can get access to get all 88 constellation cards to print yourself at home. My kids have already had so much fun going through all of them.
You can also use a hole punch to turn these flashcards into a fun nighttime game with flash lights to make constellations inside, too!
Free Rabbit Trails through Science mini-lesson!
Go down the Rabbit Trail with this FREE Rabbit Trails through Science lesson! Sign up below to receive your free lesson when you sign up for my email newsletter. And make sure that you check out more Rabbit Trails through Science lessons, too.
I hope you have as much fun studying the constellations as we have! Share your pictures, activities, and more from your studies either in the comments below or in my online homeschool community.
Make sure to visit my Amazon Storefront for all of your supplies for this lesson!
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Thank you for this great idea! My daughter loves learning about anything space related! The flash cards and the embroidery are amazing ideas!
I hope she enjoys it!
Hi! I join your mailing list but how can I print these constellation cards? I don’t see a link. Please help! Thanks!
Hey Monica! You will receive a welcome e-mail that will have the downloads to all of my free printables. If you don’t see it, make sure to check your promotions/junk folders! Every now and again my welcome e-mail will sneak in there.
Great post – pinned to my space board thanks
Sorry for being dense…I followed this link in an email and I thought there would be a link to a unit study on constellations. Is it just the post or am I missing a link to a download? Thank you!
You’ll want to scroll down near the bottom of the post and there’s a red button that says “Sign up for your free lesson!” that you’ll want to click on. After you sign up for our newsletter, you’ll be redirected to the PDF lesson.