This is for all you kids out there, or at least kids at heart! Do you like building forts out of blankets in the living room or your bedroom? Tired of just building the same old types of fortes all the time? How about building your very own spaceship fort!
My kids built one in the basement earlier this evening and showed it to me. What they used was the following items:
- Several blankets and sheets
- A red LED lamp
- Pieces of flat cardboard colored with pens and crayons
- Two smaller chairs and two higher barstools
- Several electrical cords
- Some couch cushions
- Yoga mats
- Sleeping bags
- Some electronic toys that can make continuous beeping and “computer” noises
- Some unused Game console joysticks
- A Christmas light projector set on “white star” mode
- A large fan to make the ships’ engine noise.
I have to admit they were extremely creative! They made “avionics panels” and “control panels” just by drawing on cardboard with markers and crayons.
They used the couch cushions to separate the “spacecraft” into separate rooms and quarters.
Throughout the ship, they used LED red lights so they wouldn’t “wreck their night vision” looking out “at the stars through the front window”.
They set up pictures of “extraterrestrials” in front of an “alien pod” that could make electronic noises.
They even had some of our live-in alien friends come in and pose for them in different places and stations/quarters of the craft!
NOTE: You may be asking “live-in” aliens? My very next post explains everything! 🙂
Over all, I think they did a fantastic job! Perhaps you and your kids would like to put together something like this. You can use whatever you want, but one thing I asked my kids to do is to neither use iPhone nor computers. For example, they used a picture of a cow in front of a lightbar “computer scanner” as you see here. Very simple but effective!
I wanted them to use as basic items as possible that could stand in and “inspire”. Too often kids tend to default to iPhones are computers instead of using more of their imagination. They used our outdoor Christmas light projector to produce the “Starfield” and they put it in motion to make it look like they were flying through space!
And they used old light sabers to make “laser blast” FX out in the “Starfield”. Lots of fun! :). You could also use a toy planetarium to shine stars on a screen in front of your “ship” too if you don’t have a Christmas light projector.
If you and your kids build a spaceship for it like this, I’d love to see it! Send me your best photographs and what you used to make it to greatgalacticspacegimmick@gmail.com. If you give me permission, I would like to post them in a gallery on this blog sometime soon, and I’ll make sure you get the right credit too. Let’s have some fun!
Well, here’s the entrance to the spacecraft. I’m gonna get on board and “fly someplace” with my kids!!!
For The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, I’m Gimmick Commander Ben Faltinowski! 🙂
© Ben Faltinowski and The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, 2017, authorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ben Faltinowski and The Great Galactic Space Gimmick with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
(DISCLAIMER: The alien characters depicted in this story are fictional, and any real alien with similar names, similar appearance, or similar home planet is highly coincidental. Also, the aliens and some photos used for The Earthnauts stories are used in honor and parody of various works of science-fiction and alien themed literature and media. It is believed that this constitutes legal fair-use. )
1 Pingback