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Description

Blast off to space to learn more about the planets in this energetic game, based on Captain's Coming.

Resources

You'll Need:
•Chairs or cushions (optional)

Instructions

Exploring what we know about space

Gather everyone together and tell everyone that you’re going to play a game called Space Explorers.

Ask everyone what they know about space. What does everyone know about space? What might we see in space? You could talk about the Moon, Sun, stars, Earth, or even other planets. You could look at a book or photos to help.

Explain that you’re going to pretend that you’ve blasted off into space in a rocket and you can see different space objects, such as stars and planets. You’ll need an action for each thing you can see.

Everyone could work together to think of your own actions, or you could use the examples below:

• Earth: When space rocks come close to Earth at high speeds, they’re called meteors. Lie down as quickly as you can to avoid the meteors.

• Moon: Put on your moon boots and then do a moon walk. You’ll need to move around heavily and slowly, just like an astronaut.

• Sun: The sun is our closest star, so it looks really big. Stretch as wide as you can and open and close your hands to make them twinkle.

• Stars: All the stars that we can see (apart from our Sun) are so far away that they appear to us as perfect little dots. Make yourself as small as possible.

• Rocket: Reach up as high as you can, just like a rocket taking off.

• Saturn: Saturn is famous for the big rings we can see around it. Turn around in a circle.

• Neptune: Neptune is the furthest planet from the Sun and you need a telescope to see it. Telescopes allow us to look closer at distant objects. Pretend to use a telescope to look around.

Make sure everyone knows the actions as well as they can before starting the game. You may want a volunteer or young leader to do the actions too for people to copy!


Playing the game

1. Everyone should find a space and spread out around the playing area.

2. One person should become the Space Captain. This could be a Scout, an adult volunteer or a young leader. They enter their ‘rocket’ and take the controls.

3. Everyone else is an astronaut. The astronauts pretend to float around the room. For example, they could move around on tip toes with their arms stretched out.

4. The Space Captain could shout out ‘3, 2, 1 to blast off to/by the…’ and chooses one of the actions. The astronauts all race to do action.

If you wanted to play so that there’s a winner, then the last person to do the action could then be out. You could also split the group into two teams, with the last person in winning for their team and the ‘out’ astronauts could cheer on their teammates.
If you don’t want to play competitively, after a few turns the Space Captain can then choose who will be the next Space Captain. It could be whoever did the action quickest or who did the most enthusiastic action.

Tags

• Captains coming
• Listening skills
• low cost
• Planets
• space

Badge Links

• Space Explorer - Astronauts
• Space Explorer - Planets