I don’t usually write movie reviews, but for me Star Trek always brings back memories of the original series that I watched in reruns a long time ago. I found this latest movie, Star Trek Into Darkness, fun to watch but a bit light on story and heavy on explosions. The visual effects are gorgeous, especially when you have the opportunity to see them in IMAX 3D, but I found the story line a bit too predictable.

They did a great job when they selected the cast for the 2009 Star Trek movie, and the characters are very believable younger versions of their 1960’s era selves. Without spoiling anything I can say that they all survive and at the end of the movie they start on their 5-year mission to “boldly go where no man has gone before”.

For kids who haven’t seen the original Star Trek series, this must seem like the start of a whole new adventure. You can capitalize on their excitement with space themed craft activities like making a space craft, e.g. this version of the Starship Enterprise.

This space craft is a fun visual arts activity that will interest even those students who think that art is not for them.

If you are looking for language arts activities, you could have the students make up their own Star Trek scenario and write the dialogs for characters they know or new ones they invent. Then they can act out the scenes, either by themselves or using puppets they make during art class.

The instructions for making all these projects are available in the Robots and Space section of this website.