This project is such a neat update on simply sticking glow-in-the-dark stars on your child’s wall or ceiling as décor. Turn it into a mini astrology lesson – as well as an art project! – and you have homemade constellations.
First, we needed to find images of constellations as inspiration. I’m no artist, so relied heavily on the ones we found in our Usborne Book Big Book of Stars and Planets.
Set out dark paper and glow-in-the-dark paint and recreate the star patterns. Older kids can draw the outlines and stars themselves. Younger kids may be happier filling in the dots if you draw circles where the stars go first.
In fact, Travis was happy painting his own invented “constellation” while I did the more meticulous detail of recreating what was in the book – just fine for a three year old!
A couple pointers: If you have dark cardstock instead of construction paper, use that. The paint will show up better. If you’re relegated to porous construction paper like we were, make sure your star dots are quite thick, or the paint won’t show up once it’s lights out.
We let the paint dry, then I connected the stars with white crayon. I added the name of each constellation in crayon as well.
Note: If you prefer, you can also paint the lines between stars with glow-in-the-dark paint, but I liked the idea that Travis would see just the stars in the dark, and the constellation lines by day.
Next up was mounting the cards on the ceiling – uh oh, could mama reach that high? Thanks to a stool, she could! I positioned them directly above the lamp in Travis’s bedroom so they could “charge.”
At lights out, we saw the best starry night sky! My camera could barely capture it, but do you see the glow?
joyful parenting 