If you are planning a unit on space, creating a mission control board is super simple. It doesn’t have to be expensive, mine only cost me $2! If you don’t have most of the materials laying around already, a thrift store keyboard and some applesauce caps would work great! It’s such a fun way for your kids to use their imagination.
First step, I purchased one black foam board and two black poster boards, totaling $2 at the dollar store. Once home, I laid out all of my materials where I wanted them on the foam board and traced them in place.
The materials I used were:
keyboard, light switches, CDs, applesauce caps, color changing lights, a play-doh tool, and a NASA sticker I scored back in grad school.
I wanted the keyboard, switches, and lights to be in-laid like a true control board, but that’s not necessary at all. I had a large, thin cardboard box that I was going to use for the base and backboard to the poster board.
After tracing the objects I wanted to place inside the control board, I used a razor blade to carefully cut them out.
Because the white foam stood out so much against the black, I decided to use a black sharpie to color in the white foam so it looked better. Then I glued one side of the foam board to the cardboard box and I inserted the keyboard, lights, and switches.
Then I hot glued the applesauce caps and the CDs where I wanted them. I really wanted to create a lever, and used a play-doh tool, which I hot glued the base of to a piece of cardboard that I folded.
Once I had everything inserted, I hot glued the other side of the foam board to the cardboard box and used the excess foam board that I cut out for the keyboard to create a front piece to complete the look.
Out of everything, the color changing lights are by far the favorite. I often find them on soon after I’ve thought they were done playing and turned them off 😉 I purchased these at Costco about a year ago, but these ones are very similar.
The cardboard box was deep enough to hold a few space books, which I thought was so fun. Want to see how we transformed that poster board? See our Marble Painted Planets!
Want more ideas for your space unit? Check out:S
