In the Oliver Jeffers’ story How To Catch A Star

A little boy is trying to catch a star of his very own

He thinks about flying up to the sky in his rocket

Only, it ran out of petrol last Tuesday!

Esther and William love stars

They also love rockets

We made some rockets this week

Special rockets made from the letters in our names

William chose to also make a countdown rocket

Counting down from 5 to 1

Ready to blast off

I prepared the activity for them

I wrote the letters of their name onto coloured paper squares

I asked each of them which letters they need to spell their name

They were both able to tell me

William with a little more certainty than Esther

Once the pieces were ready

Esther and William set to work

Ordering the letter squares to make up their names

And make their special rockets

Esther and William were both able to order the letters in their name

William confidently ordered his numbers from 5 to 1

Then with a little help from me and Ami, Beebies Baby Store

They started to carefully glue their pieces down

They were so focused and worked so attentively

This was an activity that both children really enjoyed

William does not do much crafting

He prefers to be on the move

But this really grabbed and held his attention

He especially loved decorating his night sky with space stickers

And adding fire and smoke coming out of his rocket

He really loved using the glitter glue

This is great for his motor skill development

So I am going to encourage him to use the glues much more

And I am going to buy some icing pens too

Then we can practice drawing and writing

By decorating biscuits!

Esther and William worked on their rockets

This is a lovely activity to accompany How To Catch A Star

It is a lovely activity for children who are learning to spell their names

It can also be used for children who are learning to count

Or put letters in alphabetical order

I think it is definitely an activity we will return to again

We loved the activity and the finished pictures are rather lovely too

Alas our rockets did not help us to catch a star of our very own

I wonder what we might try doing next?