Hands-on Learning of Constellations for Preschoolers

Vito and I were exploring constellations earlier this week as we were reading about the Big Dipper.  He was fascinated that I extended our activity into pin poking to recreate the formation of the stars (constellations).


First, we talked about the stars and the different constellations that they form.  Here you can discuss to your child the different formations. You can name the constellations but do not expect them yet to memorize the terms.  In our case, we worked on the 3 part cards first to know the different formation of the stars.  Here I used the material available in our shop (Montessori Inspired Constellation 3 Part Cards).


We still do the 3 lesson period.  After identifying the constellations, we worked with the matching activity.  It’s pretty amazing to see Vito match everything with enthusiasm (same as his older brother).

Then, we worked on the star constellation pin poking activity and used elastic bands to connect the pins (representing the stars).  This work is similar to the geoboard activity.  Here we used our Pin Poking Star Constellation Sheets that are included in the Montessori Inspired Constellation 3 Part Cards.


I used a much bigger push pin.  I bought these years ago but I didn’t get to use them until now.  We also have these neon elastic bands from Tiger shop.  I love that they vary in size and we used the small ones for our activity.


This is a great work and activity for younger children. It allows them to work with their tiny hands, enhances hand-eye coordination, and improves fine motor skills.


And here’s the Big Dipper!


He asked for more work, and so here’s the Leo.




For another extension, we used our planetarium to see the star constellations in the “night sky”.




If you want to see how we studied this subject in the past you can also check this post, Study of Star Constellation Maps for Kids.

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