Star dot pictures

From the house

• Paper
• Crayons or a pencil
• A flashlight
• A sharp pencil and a folded towel (for the grown-up)

How to play

1. Tell them that long ago, people joined groups of stars into pictures in the sky, called constellations.
2. They draw 5–8 dots, then join them with lines to make a picture: a dog, a spoon, a dragon.
3. They give it a name and tell you a short story about it.
4. You poke a hole through each dot over the folded towel, then darken the room and shine the flashlight through the paper to put their stars on the ceiling.

Fit it to your child

• Easier: Draw the dots for them in an easy shape, like a house or a fish, and they join them.
• Harder: Draw the Big Dipper together (seven stars in a saucepan shape) and look for it in the northern sky on a clear night.

Words to use

• star
• dot
• join
• constellation
• pattern
• sky

Why it helps

Joining dots into pictures builds pattern-spotting, the same way people have read the night sky for thousands of years.