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Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing at Scouts. Read more

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Groovy galaxy

Use marbles to create artwork that’s out of this world!
Plan a session with this activity

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You’ll need

  • A tray or container that you don’t mind getting paint on
  • Black card
  • Bouncy balls
  • Marbles
  • Different coloured paints
  • Star sequins (optional)
  • Space-themed stickers (optional)
  • Glitter (optional)

Before you begin 

  • Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely. 
  • Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers 

Setting up the activity 

  1. Gather everyone in a circle and tell them they’re going to make their own galaxy. 
  2. Ask if anyone knows what a galaxy is. Our galaxy contains millions of stars, including our Sun. It’s just one of more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe. 

Running the activity 

  1. Divide everyone into groups. 
  2. Each group will be taking it in turns to make their own galaxy. 
  3. Each group needs to have a tray or container that you don’t mind getting paint on, such as a washing up bowl. 
  4. Taking it in turns, the first person needs to place their black card into the bottom. 
  5. The person then needs to blob paint randomly onto the card – we’d suggest blue, silver and purple paint make a galaxy look more space-like, but any colours work well. 
  6. Add two or three marbles or bouncy balls to your container and roll them around in a circular motion.   
  7. The person should keep moving the ball around, by lifting and moving around the container. As the balls roll through the paint, they’ll leave trails, and this’ll start to form your galaxy. 
  8. When they’re happy with the result, the person should carefully remove the balls and wash them.  
  9. When finished, each person should simply clean the wash tub with warm soapy water afterwards and dry it, then the next person can repeat the steps to create their galaxy. 
  10. Once a person has added paint and created their galaxy, they could sprinkle a pinch of biodegradable glitter over the top, while the paint’s still wet. 
  11. Leave the artwork to dry – you could split this activity into two sessions. 
  12. Once your design’s dry, pour some white paint into a pot and dip a paintbrush into the paint. Use the paintbrush’s bristles to splatter paint onto the picture to make the stars.  
  13. You could add extra craft items and stickers, such as rockets and planets, to create a galaxy background for you to create your own space scene. 

Reflection

This activity was all about creating your own space scene and using different painting techniques. What was your favourite part? What made you choose the colours? How did you make it look like space in your photo? 

In this activity you had to share equipment. Was it hard to wait for your turn? How did you make sure it was fair and everyone had time to make their picture? Did you help anyone? How did your group wash up and make sure everything was ready to go for people?  

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

  • If anyone needs help or struggles with fine motor skills, give them the opportunity to work in pairs, with a young leader or an adult volunteer. As people work in pairs, their partner can also help with the parts they find tricky. Alternatively, if anyone struggles with fine motor skills, they could use larger materials. Swap out the items for something easier to handle.  
  • There are lots of different ways to be creative. People can choose what works best for them, or just what they most enjoy. 
  • Anyone who struggles with creating a design could be given paper with a pre-drawn image that they can glue or stick craft materials onto. 
  • If anyone needs support in using craft items, allow them to work with someone else who can help them. 

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.

Scouts Artist Activity Badge
Cubs Artist Activity Badge

You could turn it into a science experiment and try different items, such as bouncy balls, golf balls, ping pong balls, tennis balls and marbles to see what works best. 

Let young people roll the balls around themselves in the container and choose their own paint colour.