Lorelai requested a solar system craft after watching an episode of Bubble Guppies last week. I thought it was a GREAT idea! I’ve also been wanting to bring back themed weeks in our preschool program so this was the perfect excuse. I’ve got a space-themed activity or craft lined up for every day this week. Stay tuned!
Anyway, she really enjoyed doing this one – probably because it was all her idea! I went back and forth about whether to make the planets bigger, but I figured it’d be best to keep it as a 1-page printable. The smaller planets don’t look very big when printed out, but the whole thing really comes together when hung up on the wall. =) I also tried to keep the planets to scale the best I could based on the picture from this site (which is also a GREAT resource for planets), but who knows if that’s completely accurate. It’s good enough for me!! I also only included our planet’s moon. This website has a great list of all of the moons – feel free to draw, cut out, and include the other 170-ish! Haha =)
Materials We Used:
- 1 Paper Plate (for the sun)
- 3 Pieces of Cardstock (1 to print on, 2 to glue down on)
- Paint (we used watercolors)
- Paintbrushes
- Glue
- Tape
- Marker (optional)
Directions:
- Print our the solar system printable (below) and have your child paint it. Our colors most definitely are not exact, but I tried to keep them close to the image on this website.
- Paint the paper plate (sun) yellow.
- Once dry, cut out each planet. Be sure to write the name of the planet on the back so you don’t get them mixed up!! For saturn, I just cut the white part (where the rings don’t touch the planet) out of leftover cardstock. You could just cut it out with scissors or a pairing knife as well.
- Once all of the planets are cut out, tape two pieces of cardstock together like the photo above. I just used tape on the back half so it wouldn’t show up on the front.
- Lay out your sun and planets and make them all fit across the two sheets of cardstock. As you can see, our sun hangs off the end.
- Glue everything down.
- Add any writing or text! I was going to have Lorelai write everything but she obviously wasn’t in a writing mood, hence the cover-ups. =)
Another thing you could do is paint/color the white cardstock. I wanted the planets to stand out so we didn’t, but if you made all of the planets super light colors, it would work.
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I love this! Found you on Skip To My Lou. Would you please share this with our readers for Fun Stuff Fridays? http://www.toysinthedryer.com/2012/02/fun-stuff-fridays-11.html
Love this! I really appreciate all the awesome stuff you share. I’m definitely going to do this with my 4 year old so she can get a visual. She already knows the names of the planets thanks to They Might Be Giants. They have some awesome science songs on the album Here Comes Science.