Kids across Canada are excitedly counting down the days until March Break.
They are SO ready for a whole week off school, but are YOU prepared?!
Whether you’re off on a family road trip, or just trying to keep them busy while you work from home, Usborne has you covered!
Modify a paper spaceship to win an intergalactic race, get lost in a fast-paced game of Space Snap, or spend some quiet time with a sticker book full of fun space facts. Read on to find ways to fill your March Break with out of this world fun!
Houston, we are go for launch.
Have you ever dreamed about piloting your very own spaceship? How awesome would it be to blast off into the atmosphere and soar across the universe?! Put your skills to the test with 100 Spaceships to Fold & Fly!
Aim for the stars with your own fleet of paper spaceship gliders! This book contains 100 tear-out sheets to fold into orbital cruisers, deep space explorers, and alien motherships.
Choose your favourite design and get your siblings, friends, parents, or grandparents to do the same. When everyone has their spaceships ready to fly, start your countdown!
5… 4… 3… 2… 1… BLAST OFF!
Who’s spaceship soared the furthest? Did anyone have a crash landing?
How can you modify your spaceship to go further & faster next time?!
Here are some tips to help you hit light speed! (Ok…not really light speed…but let us know which worked best for you!)
How to fly your spaceship:
- Stand facing forward.
- Hold your spaceship just in front of the middle of it’s body.
- Pull back and then throw forward in a long, smooth movement to release your spaceship.
Folding Tips:
- Use a ruler to line up the folds.
- Keep your folds as smooth as possible. Carefully run your thumbnail over every fold to keep creases smooth and corners sharp!
- If you want to keep your spaceship for another day, store it flat inside a book.
- If your spaceship gets wet, or won’t fly…fold a new one! There’s 100 of them in the book!
- Try the folds out on different types of paper from around your house! Newspaper, magazine paper, or cardstock…Does a different paper type affect how your spaceship flies?
Flying Tips:
- Try changing the angle of your spaceship’s wings to alter its flight.
- Try adding a paperclip to the nose of your spaceship to see how that affects its flight. What happens if you attach a paperclip to a different part of the spaceship?
- Make sure you have lots of space for throwing your spaceship! Try a long hallway, or down the stairs (safely!)…Will your spaceship fly further from the top of the stairs?!
There are so many ways to have fun with Spaceships to Fold & Fly!!
Snap….IN SPACE!
How fast are your Snap skills? No, we’re not talking about finger snapping…we’re talking about the card game! But, while we’re on the topic, can astronauts snap their fingers in space? Do you think it still makes a sound?
While your parent/guardian looks up the answer, let’s play a round of Space Snap!
How to Play (2 or more players):
- There are 52 snap cards (13 matching sets of 4) in the box.
- Shuffle the deck of cards and deal them out to all the players.
- Each player puts their cards in a face-down pile in front of them.
- One at a time, the players turn over the top card of their pile and put it face-up in the middle, making a new pile.
- If a card matches the card immediately below it, the first person to call “SNAP!” wins the whole middle pile of cards!
- This person starts the game again.
- If you run out of cards, you’re out of the game.
- The person who ends up with all the cards WINS!
Playing with younger kids?
- To make the game easier for younger kids, remove 2 of each matching card so that you’re only playing with 13 matching sets of 2.
- Shuffle the deck, deal the cards, and play the same way as above!
Different ways to play:
- To make the game more silly/fun, make a rule that instead of calling “SNAP!”, you have to make an animal noise, call out your name, or just make a funny sound instead!
- Try playing a round of FAST SNAP! Turn over your cards into the middle pile as quick as you can (still taking turns, of course!), and see if you can still call out the matches!
- Try playing a round of QUIET SNAP. Play the game the same as usual, but instead of calling out “SNAP!” you have to wave your hands, or wiggle your fingers over the middle pile.
Have the Snap cards but no one else to play with?
- Use your deck of Snap cards to play a memory matching game instead!
- Shuffle your cards and place them all face-down on a table in a grid pattern.
- Flip over one card, and then take a guess at where it’s match may be hiding. Flip it over to find out!
- If they don’t match, flip them back over face-down and choose a new card…But don’t forget which cards you saw, and where they were in the grid!
- When you find two cards that match, then YAY! Put them off to the side together, and keep searching for more matches!
- The game is done when you’ve matched up all the cards.
- You can play this with more than 1 person too! Just take turns looking for matches. The person with the most matches at the end, wins!
How many ways can you find to play a game of Space Snap?!
Looking for a quiet space?
Sometimes we need a little quiet time on our own, away from all the noise (or, maybe Mom & Dad took away your iPad?). If you’re looking for something to do to pass the time, let’s take an adventure into the great unknown with the Space Sticker Book!
It has over 250 stickers in it!! Explore outer space, see what it might be like to live in a space station, or just have fun placing floating astronauts all over the page. There are lots of cool space facts to learn along the way!
DID YOU KNOW THAT…
- the first rocket to reach space was October 3rd, 1942?
- the first animal to orbit the Earth was Russian Space Dog, Laika, on November 3rd, 1957?
- the first woman in space was Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, on June 16th, 1963?
- Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin, the first men on the moon, spent 21 hours on the moon, including 2.5 hours outside the lunar module?
Find out so much more in the Space Sticker Book – and have lots of fun stickering your own space scenes along the way!
Find all of these awesome space titles (and more!) on your Usborne Consultant’s website.
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Click here to use our Consultant Finder, and we’ll get you connected with someone as soon as possible.
Keep an eye on our blog as we wrap up our March Break Countdown on Monday with…SCIENCE!