“The General Assembly declares 4 to 10 October World Space Week to celebrate each year at the international level the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition”
UN General Assembly resolution, 6 December 1999
What is World Space Week?
World Space Week is an international celebration of all things SPACE. It is the largest space event on Earth with a proud claim to more than 5,000 events celebrated in over 80 countries across the World! It even has its own dedicated website: https://www.worldspaceweek.org/ and a board of directors that help to ensure that there is a whole heap of resources available to help make the most of this extraordinary, cosmic event.
How do we get involved?
World Space Week encourages and supports ANYONE to create space education and outreach events.
With so many organisations, educators and families getting involved, it is an amazing opportunity to come together as a community of interested individuals to arrange and participate in such a large scale event. There's no strict rules about what you should be doing, as long as its space themed then its a celebration.
Check with your local council and clubs if there is an event near you. Many places of interest, such as parks, woodlands, museums, theme parks and public spaces with visitor centers etc often run events, especially for children and families so its worth looking around for any events that they may be holding. Everyone can get involved, schools, clubs and organisations, but if you can't find an activity that is happening near you, why not plan your own?
Any space related activity will do, from a drawing activity to big group quiz. You can create your own crosswords or write a story about your trip to the Moon! Build a space den, create an experiment, eat some space food... There are so many free resources available on the internet... all you have to do is explore the possibilities!
What did we do?
Well, as I am sure you may have guessed, we did not want to be left out of the Space Party!
So, we got our heads together and decided to do a Glowtopia Space Week event. Now, we had every intention of building a rocket, but honestly, we just didn't have enough cardboard to build a vessel we could all fit inside! We thought about trying to make our own miniature moon, creating a model solar system or even a life size planetarium... but in the end, the little people at Glowtopia outvoted us all.... and so fancy dress day it was!
And yes, you guessed it... if Glowtopia are doing a Space Week fancy dress day, it's going to be glowing!
Well, we were already off to a flying start with our Alien Eyes Headbands! We couldn't exactly have a space themed dress up and leave those out of the equation. I thought it would be a great idea to make the kiddies' heads the alien, and then have their bodies as the space... The kids decided they HAD to have the Light Up Crazy Hair (it seems all aliens have a squiggly, coloured, tentacle type things spilling from their head!) that was easy...
Obviously it wasn't enough lights! We picked up some metallic star, planet and alien stickers, and the kids had great fun sticking them all over their black tops and trousers, but to make sure they really stood out, we had to get some "dazzling" stars on there too... So, we went and got our LED micro lights and wrapped them around them T-Shirts. If you do this at home, please be careful! DO NOT wrap the light strings anywhere near the neck area, we wrapped ours in an X around the front and back going over the shoulder and under the arms so as not to move around and get caught up. DO NOT leave children unattended while wearing the string lights!
Now that we had finished with our space outfit, Alien eyes and Alien hair, it was just the facepaint left to go. We copied the eyes from the headbands on the eyes of the kids, making wide white circles on the whole eye area, and with their eyes closed we painted coordinating coloured pupils and iris to match. We painted an alien body shaped design over half of the face in colours that matched the headbands, gave a few space spots to the aliens, and painted little white alien claw feet (a bit like a crab).
Nope.... still not enough! So we added some highlights with our UV Neon face paint and used our new chunky glitters to add a bit of detail to the faces and just like that, with the speed of light (well not quite) we have 3 mega little martians ready to celebrate World Space Week!
We really hope you join in the fun this World Space Week.... and beyond!
Whatever you do, wherever you go, take that giant leap for mankind and always reach for the stars!
