I have a space-obsessed kid in my house, so we love to do space crafts around here, and my son was very excited to do this moon craft! We made it extra fun and experimented with a different way to paint by making it foil-printed. This craft is great for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, or even older kids. It would also be a great art extension during a space theme in the classroom.
We love to experiment with different ways to paint, and stamping and printing with foil is a fun one we have tried recently. Make a stamp out of foil, and then use paint to print with it. The texture this creates works really well to make the moon’s crater-filled landscape.
Materials Needed for the Foil-Printed Moon Craft:
- foil
- measuring cup (or other small cup)
- white paper
- something round to trace
- marker
- black paper
- gray paint
- optional: white and black paint
- scissors
- glue
Getting the Moon Craft ready:
To get this craft ready, I first created the foil “stamps”.
Do to this, press the foil into the measuring cup. Push the foil into the bottom of the cup, until it forms a round bottom. I also molded the top a bit to make a little handle.
Use a plate or lid to trace a circle onto a white piece of paper.
I put gray and white paint onto a plate for the kids to dip their stamps into. This craft works well with just gray paint, but we decided to add white for more dimension.
Doing the Foil-Printed Moon:
First, dip the bottom of the foil stamp into the gray paint.
If using white paint, dip some of the stamp into the white paint as well.
Stamp the paint onto the circle shape to make the moon.
At this point, my son decided that we needed to add some black paint for more craters. You can stop there, or add in some black paint and continue stamping.
When you’re finished stamping, put the moon aside to dry.
Meanwhile, make the background by making gray or white dots onto a a black piece of paper.
After all of the paint dries, cut the moon out and glue it to the black paper.
Now you have your moon in space!
I think it looks really neat with all of the texture and looks a lot like the craters on the real moon.
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If you wanted to, you could have cut outs of the different phases of the moon and allow your kids/students to cut out the phase they like the most after discussing it with them before pasting it the star background. You could also discuss constellations and have them make one as part of their starry background. I plan to do this with my 1st graders during summer camp.
I love this idea! Thank you so much for sharing!!!