Nebula Art

Kids seem fascinated by anything related to space. Recently, my son became fascinated with stars, planets, and nebulae. As luck would have it, our family was working on our goal to experience Plentiful Living with a Minimalist Approach to Life. I had decided that it was time to purge my craft supplies. My son had decided to do his science project on outer space. These two goals collided and exploded into a beautiful art project.

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Make sure you have a workspace where the children can make their nebula art project without making too big of a mess.
Have them put white glue on canvas
Then use a dropper to add watercolor concentrate on to to the glue.
Take a toothpick and swirl. Be careful not to mix the colors together.
Add glitter and allow to dry. (If you have an aversion to glitter, you can skip this step. )
Talk about how different materials react differently when combined. What characteristics make them behave the way they do? Does it make a difference is one substance is thicker or more oily?

Have the kids do some astronomy research.

After the painting was done we went online to discover more about nebulae. Beautiful dust clouds form in space and the materials in the clouds form nebulae. There are different types of nebulae. Did you know that planetary nebulae are made when a star runs out of fuel to burn? What happens next is amazing.

We are fortunate to live near an observatory where we can look through their telescope during their visitor days but if you don’t there are many online resources.

We love NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. You can go through their archive and find pictures for any of your family’s special days or you can peruse the pictures and learn more about astronomy

Learn About Nebulae With Kids Astronomy.

The BBC has more information on Nebulae.

Kid Info has a wealth of resources for discovering more about these beautiful gas clouds.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics offers a really cool feature where you can choose an astronomical object to observe and they will email you the photo.

We find that combining art or craft projects with learning new concepts is a brilliant way to keep children engaged as they learn. The kids have Fun with Science in Art so we looked for, and found, some more amazing projects that combine science and art. One teacher explains how she has her students Discover Science Through Art-Based Activities. She felt that by doing activities like this, that she was meeting the needs of her students. Here are 12 ways to integrate science and art activities and you might want to check out some easy and simple ways to explore and create science-art projects.