Space Basket

After we retired our Hawaii basket, we replaced it with all sorts of fun things about space.The space basket was quite popular with the girls, so I kept it around longer than I planned.

I also discovered a very helpful side benefit to these theme baskets. It’s very easy to just grab it and go when I needed entertainment for the girls while we were waiting around for things like oil changes. We had a very pleasant waiting room time thanks to the space basket!

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I scoured some of my favorite blogs for fun stuff to put in the basket.Here’s what I came up with: space flashcards from the Target dollar aisle held together with a binder ring, planet/not planet sorting game from the Solar System preschool pack at 1+1+1=1, and rocket size sorting from the Astronaut preschool pack at 1+1+1=1.

I also made some simple counting cards. I wrote the numbers 1-10 on index cards and paired them with a pile of stars. The girls would take a card and count out the correct number of stars.

As always, I included a file folder with several space-themed coloring pages (not pictured).

And finally, for fun, we added our 4th of July headbands after determining that they looked like alien headbands.

I found so many great space books at our library, but finally narrowed it down to these five:

Floating Home by David Getz

The Planets by Gail Gibbons

The Magic School Bus Lost In The Solar System by Joanna Cole

If I Were an Alien by Vivan French(this was a favorite)

Shooting Stars by Franklyn M. Branley (which unfortunately appears to be out of print)

When it’s time to pack away the contents of our theme baskets, we usually have a day devoted to it’s contents. This time, we decided to celebrate with Galaxy play dough! Now we’re working on putting together a butterfly basket – should be fun!