Space and planet games for kids

Young children are natural astronomers. They notice the Moon following the car, ask why the Sun goes away at night, and want to know if anyone lives on Mars. Galaxy Explorer, the space world in Toddler's Galaxy, turns those questions into pictures and short, simple facts.

What's in Galaxy Explorer

Galaxy Explorer has 24 cards in three groups:

• The solar system: the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, plus our Moon and Pluto, which is a dwarf planet.
• The night sky: stars, constellations, shooting stars and comets, and even a black hole.
• Space explorers: a rocket, an astronaut, a spacesuit, the space station, a moon rover and a telescope. For fun, there's also a friendly alien and a UFO.

Each planet has its own illustration, so Saturn's rings, Jupiter's stripes and Earth's blue and green all look different. Tapping a card reads a short line aloud: "Earth! The blue and green planet where we all live. Our home!"

Games to play

Galaxy Explorer has the same games as the other worlds: tap-and-learn cards, a quiz, Memory, Balloon Pop, Match & Drop, Catch and the Phonics Speller, where children build short space words like STAR, SKY and SPACE. There's also a Counting game with space pictures.

Space play at home

You don't need a telescope to explore space with a preschooler:

1. Moon diary. Look at the Moon each clear evening for a couple of weeks and draw its shape. Watch it grow and shrink.
2. Planet line-up. Line up fruit from small to big to show the planets' sizes: a pea for Mercury, a big melon for Jupiter.
3. Make a rocket. A kitchen roll tube, paper cone and some tape make a rocket for a "3, 2, 1, blast off!" countdown.
4. Star spotting. On a clear night, look for the brightest stars and give them names together.
5. Shadow play. Use a torch as the Sun and a ball as the Earth to show day and night.

Why planets suit this age

Space is full of things young children are already learning: colours (red Mars, blue Neptune), shapes (round planets, crescent Moon), sizes (big Jupiter, little Mercury) and counting (eight planets). It's a topic children often choose for themselves, and that interest makes everything else easier to talk about.