Create a Hands-on Astronomy Activity with Crayons and Watercolors

Use watercolors to reveal hidden crayon constellations

Yesterday we continued with our space themed activities and talked a little about stars. The girls were not interested in talking or doing much of anything that they considered work today. So after a brief discussion about stars (very brief) we got out the watercolors. The girls didn't know it, but I had drawn constellations on some white paper earlier with a white crayon (Thank you School Time Snippets for the idea).

I told them that certain groups of stars, called constellations, made pictures in the sky and as they painted they would find some constellations. Sure enough when they painted over the white crayon the paint wouldn't stick revealing the stars and lines I had drawn earlier. I wrote the name of the constellation on the paper as well.

Watercolor painting to find constellations

They were so excited every time they found something, "Mama, I found a star!" or "Mama, I found the name!"

Wax resist constellations revealed by watercolor paints

After a couple pictures my oldest realized that you could feel the crayon on the paper, so she started to just paint where she felt stars.

I knew their attention span was not too great today, so I only made a few. I tried to choose ones they would be interested in or could spot easily. As I expected, their favorites were the unicorn, pegasus, and giraffe. I don't think I could actually find these in the sky if I tried, but they liked seeing them on a star chart app with the picture of the animal as an overlay (so you could see what people were thinking when they named it).