Astronaut Costumes

1. Buy Astronaut snacks.
A favorite that’s available commercially is astronaut ice cream. Other foods that astronauts eat will be harder to find packaged as space food. A good approach would be to buy MRE packs, or dehydrated backpacker foods. Avoid things like crackers that break into crumbs. You don’t want crumbs flying around the space ship.

2. Buy drinks.
In space cups don’t work because there’s no gravity. You have to drink out of a bag with an attached straw. You can’t buy these exact bags on earth, but you can approximate the experience with capri suns, or other drinks tied up in plastic bags and pierced with a straw next to the knot.

3. Decorate.
Hang stars and planets from the ceiling. Put a mission control banner over the front door. Put a slide show of NASA pictures on the TV.

4. Make space helmets out of paper bags.
Cut a big hole in one side to see out of, and cut the sides to rest on the shoulders. Let the kids decorate their helmets. Designate an area as outer space. Suggest that they pretend they can’t go there without a helmet.

5. Make flashlight planetarium lights.
Cut a flashlight sized hole in one end of a box, and poke holes in the other end in the shape of constellations. Shine the light through to create stars on the ceiling of a dark room.

6. Make balloon rockets.
Cut pieces of drinking straw and put them into the mouth of an oblong balloon. Put a rubber band around the straw and the balloon to hold them together. Now when you blow up the balloon, when you let go it will act like a rocket. Suggest rocket races to see who’s goes the furthest.

7. If your budget allows, get an inflatable jumping house.
Kids like the idea of being an astronaut because they want to be weightless. That’s hard to do on earth, but a jumping house is a step in that direction.

From eHow.com article: How to Throw an Astronaut Children’s Party