This week across our Grow Early Education centres, children have been reaching for the stars as we celebrate Space Week 2025. Our Educators have been sparking curiosity about the wonders of the universe through play, creativity, and exploration.

From glowing stars and swirling planets to astronauts floating in zero gravity, space is a topic that instantly excites children, there’s something truly magical about exploring what lies beyond our planet and for young children, learning about space isn’t just about facts and science, it’s about nurturing wonder, discovery, and a love for learning.

While Space Week is a wonderful opportunity to focus on the cosmos, our Educators and Curriculum Teams work together to find ways to nurture curiosity about science and discovery all year round.

Introducing early concepts of space in early education helps children:
Develop curiosity and questioning skills, “What’s out there?” “Why do stars twinkle?”
Explore STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math) concepts in playful ways such as counting planets, building rockets, or comparing sizes and shapes.
Engage their creative thinking through imaginative play by pretending to be astronauts, aliens, or scientists.
Strengthen language and literacy learning new words such as “orbit,” “gravity,” or “galaxy.”

When space is introduced through hands-on, age-appropriate experiences, it becomes a gateway for big thinking and helps children connect what they know about their world to what exists beyond it.

Across our Grow Early Education centres, Educators bring the theme of space to life through creative, sensory, and play-based learning experiences.

Here are just a few of the ways children explore the cosmos at Grow Early Education:

One of the children’s favourite experiences is creating paper mâché planets. Using balloons, newspaper, and paint, children can design their own colourful versions of the solar system. This activity offers so much more than just art, it becomes a rich opportunity for learning and skill development.

As children shape and paint their planets, they also develop fine motor skills through tearing, gluing, and brushing, express their creativity by choosing colours and textures, and strengthen their scientific thinking as Educators guide conversations around the planets’ sizes, orbits, and characteristics.

Another engaging experience is exploring space-themed sensory trays, filled with foil, natural materials such as wood, cotton, and rocks, and cut-outs of moons, rockets, and friendly aliens. This inviting setup encourages children to explore different textures, materials, and imaginative ideas as they play.

As children scoop, sort, and create stories within the tray, they develop their sensory awareness, fine motor coordination, and language skills, while also building an understanding of how materials and environments can represent the world — and universe — around them.

Painting planets is another classic Space themed activity where children add colour and texture to paper cut-outs representing the planets of our solar system. Using brushes, cotton buds, or fingers, children experiment with mixing and applying paint, creating unique patterns and designs.

This creative experience supports the development of fine motor skills as children hold and control tools, express their creativity through colour and pattern choices, and build early scientific understanding as educators talk about the planets, their colours, and positions in the solar system. It’s a hands-on way to make the universe feel close, exciting, and full of possibilities.

Each of these experiences encourages children to think like little explorers, asking questions, making predictions, and sharing their discoveries with peers.

Exploring space connects seamlessly to many areas of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), including:

Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners — as they experiment, investigate, and problem-solve through play.

Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators — as they express ideas, share knowledge, and engage in rich conversations about what they discover.

Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world — as they begin to understand their place in the wider universe.

Through these experiences, children not only learn about space, they learn about possibility. They dream, imagine, and explore the idea that there’s so much more to discover.
By turning space into a hands-on, sensory-rich experience, our Educators are building a foundation for lifelong curiosity and learning.

Follow us on Facebook to stay up to date with each of our Grow Early Education centres and explore how they celebrate Space:

At Grow Early Education, we believe science is a way for children to explore, question, and discover the world around them every day.

This National Science Week, we’re sharing a collection of simple, age-appropriate science experiments you can try at home with your little one. These activities fun and engaging, plus they also help build important skills such as problem-solving, observation, and prediction. Skills we nurture in our own science-based learning experiences across our centres.

Babies (0–1 years)

Rainbow Ice
Create colourful ice cubes using water and a few drops of food colouring. Place them in a large container or sensory tray and let your baby explore the melting ice. You can add a small container of warm water for them to experiment with melting the ice faster.

This activity encourages sensory exploration through temperature, texture, and colour while helping babies develop early observation skills. They begin to understand cause and effect as they notice the ice melting more quickly in warm water, and their language skills grow as you introduce new words like “cold,” “melting,” “blue,” and “mixing.”

Sound Bottles

Fill a clear, empty plastic bottle with items such as beads, rice, or bells. Let your baby shake the bottle to explore the different sounds each filling makes.

Shaking the bottle helps babies discover cause and effect while developing their listening skills as they hear the different sounds. It also promotes fine motor development through grasping and shaking, as well as visual tracking, as they watch the items move inside the bottle.

Toddlers (1–3 years)

Fizzing Colours

Add baking soda to a tray. Mix vinegar and food colouring in small cups, then use droppers to release the coloured vinegar onto the baking soda. Watch the fizzy reaction unfold right in front of your eyes!

This experiment introduces Toddlers to basic chemistry as they watch the acid and base reaction create fizz. They strengthen colour recognition and begin exploring colour mixing, while using droppers supports fine motor skills. Asking them to guess what will happen next also encourages curiosity and early prediction skills.

Sink or Float

Fill a large tub with water. Collect natural materials from around the home. Before dropping each item in, ask your child to guess: “Will this sink or float?”

This hands-on activity helps Toddlers begin to think like scientists by making predictions and testing their ideas. They practise categorisation skills and start to understand buoyancy, while also expanding their vocabulary with words such as “heavy,” “light,” “float,” and “sink.”

Pre-Kindy (3–4 years)

Walking Rainbow

Arrange jars of water coloured with food dye and blank water in a circle, alternating blank water with coloured water. Place a strip of paper towel between each jar, making sure the ends dip into the water. Watch the colours travel and mix over time.

Children strengthen their observation skills as they watch the colours slowly move, mix, and blend over time. This experiment introduces them to absorption and capillary action in a visual way, supports their understanding of colour mixing, and encourages them to talk through the sequence of events they see.

Shadow Tracing

Lay paper or card next to an object’s shadow and have your child trace its outline. Return throughout the day to see how the shadow has changed.

Shadow tracing helps children understand how the position of the sun changes shadows throughout the day. It also develops early measurement and comparison skills, supports fine motor control through drawing, and sparks curiosity about nature and the passing of time.

Kindergarten & Preschool (4–5 years)

Colour Changing Flowers or Celery

Place white flowers or celery stalks in a jar of coloured water. Over time, the stems will draw up the coloured water and change colour.

This activity introduces children to plant biology by showing how plants absorb water through their stems. It encourages them to observe and record changes over time, developing patience, attention to detail, and early scientific thinking.

Blowing Up a Balloon With Gas

Use a funnel to insert baking soda into a deflated balloon. Fill a bottle with vinegar, then carefully attach the balloon to the bottle’s neck without spilling the baking soda. Lift the balloon so the baking soda falls in. This will create a fizzy reaction, causing gas to inflate the balloon.

This experiment demonstrates chemical reactions and gas formation in a way children can see and enjoy. It promotes problem-solving and sequencing as they follow the steps, encourages them to make predictions, and gives them a memorable “wow” moment that builds excitement for science.

At Grow Early Education, science is a part of our everyday learning. From sensory exploration with our youngest babies to hands-on STEM projects with our older children, we create opportunities for children to investigate, experiment, and discover.

By trying these activities at home, you’re extending your child’s learning and giving them the chance to see science as something fun, exciting, and part of the world around them. Together, we can help inspire the next generation of curious thinkers and problem-solvers.

To further enrich these activities, you can use the Abecedarian Approach Australia (3a) Language Priority by talking your child through each reaction and change they observe during the experiment. This ongoing conversation helps build their communication skills and introduces them to a wider range of new words.

Follow us on Facebook to keep up to date with our Grow Early Education centres and see how we have acknowledged and celebrated National Science Week this week:

Find your

Centre Location

All Content Copyright © 2026 Grow Early Education. | Privacy Policy | Website Design Gold Coast by Shared Marketing