If your kids love all things space, or you just want a fun activity to do on a windy day, this flying rocket craft for kids is perfect!
The free printable rocket template makes this rocket craft easy enough for preschoolers to make, and fun enough for elementary ages kids, and everyone will love flying their swishy rocket around outside on a windy day!
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Boy it’s been windy here lately! And wild windy days always seem to make my kids a little wild too! They can’t seem to sit still and when they go outside into the blustery weather they run around like a pack of nutbags and do all kinds of silly things!
To rein in the wildness, and take advantage of the sunny but windy days we came up with an idea to take advantage of the wild windiness, and we made some cool super swishy flying rockets!
This easy rocket craft makes a kite-like space ship that easily zooms around, even if it’s not a windy day. With a few basic craft supplies and our free printable rocket template this fun rocket craft is perfect for a space learning theme, or just for fun!
For such an easy kids craft, these rockets turned out to be really fun to make and even more fun play with!
If you are looking for more space themed learning activities try this paper plate planets craft for learning about the solar system, or check out our space playdough activity and free printables.
Supplies for Making this Flying Rocket Craft.
Here’s what you’ll need to make this super swishy flying rocket craft:
- Our rocket template (see below to download) or draw your own.
- Some heavy cardstock or the side of an old cereal box.
- Something to colour your rocket with – paint, markers or crayons.
- Crepe paper streamers in firey colours
- Scissors
- Glue
- A hole punch
- String
- A stick (we used a bamboo garden stake, but you could use any stick from the garden)
How to Make a Flying Rocket!
Once you have gathered all your supplies you’ll start by printing or drawing a rocket onto some stiff card so it will fly well.
We didn’t have any cardboard that would go through our printer so we printed the rocket template onto plain paper and then glued it onto the side of an empty cereal box before cutting it out.
Once you have your rocket cut out, it’s time to decorate it! Add some colours with paint, crayons, markers or whatever you have on hand. We used liquid water colours and cotton buds to paint our rockets.
You’ll need to make sure you colour/draw on both sides of the cardboard so your rocket looks great from both sides.
Once you’ve coloured your rocket you need to glue the streamers onto the bottom. We chose fluro red, yellow, orange and pink streamers so it would look like a burst of flames shooting out the end of our rockets! Leave the streamers nice and long so they make a wild and swishy ‘tail’.
When your rocket is decorated (and dry) cut a piece of string around 30cms long and punch a hole in the top of your rocket.
Tie one end of the string to the rocket and the other to the end of your stick. Wrap a piece of sticky tape around the string and the stick to stop it slipping if you need to.
Now your rocket is ready to fly!
These little rockets swish around super fast if there is a bit of wind outside or even if you just twirl them around, and they make an awesome rushing sound that we think sounds just like super sonic rocket boosters!
They are so much fun to swirl and swish and fly around!
Free Printable Rocket Template.
You can use your own design to make this rocket craft, or you can use our free printable rocket template.
Our rocket template is a simple design so there is lots of room for kids to use their creativity and add their own ideas and details.
This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. It will fit to print on US ‘letter sized’ paper, just be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options to allow for printer margins.
Click here to download the rocket craft template.
Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.
These rockets turned out to be so much fun that we busy thinking of new designs. Perhaps some swishy swirly flying butterflies, or birds!
More Space Activities and Ideas.
If your kids love everything to do with space that will love these fun space themed activities and ideas:
Try making this super soft space playdough recipe.
Check out our super cool space playdough mat set in the shop.
Have fun making a straw rocket with our free printable.
this is AWESOME. We made one during school holidays ( very windy in Tasmania at the moment) and it is great, VERY swishy and my son loves it!! really great fun to make too, thank you
Thank you. One of my DCK’s brought in a book to share with us today about a Rocket and this activity made a perfect extension idea to make afterwards. The kids loved it.
hey thanks for amazing idea.. i am going to make my preschooler a kite using this idea…;)