01 May A Beginner’s Guide to the Solar System

Clark and Luci are developing a fascination with the Solar System.  It’s been our whole focus this week as we read books, stayed up late to get a good glimpse of the moon, drew and colored the planets and anything else we can find that is Solar System related! Stick around for a beginner’s guide to the solar system!

A Solar System Panorama

We started out with our favorite, enormous strip of paper, stretching through the entire entrance to our home.  For Clark and Luci, the bigger it is, the better!

Then with a few library books on hand, with all of us on the floor, I would read to them about each planet.  The books we choose were very simple with very little detail, usually just one or two defining characteristics.  The children would then decide how big to make it and what color to use.

We started with the sun, of course.  It had to be the biggest and it was Clark’s idea to draw it partially showing on the page.  They colored it yellow with bursts of orange to indicate heat and fire.  They took turns drawing the planets.  Luci drew Mercury and then our friend, William drew Venus.

Clark picked up on the volcanic action on this planet and included many “volcanos” spewing into the atmosphere.  Venus was colored in warm colors, red and orange, to convey the heat of this planet.

Next came the Earth.  Clark drew it and included several land masses.  William very proudly included the moon.

Then came Mars and Jupiter.  Jupiter was huge and took a lot of effort to color in.  In fact all three kids declared that their arms hurt from coloring, but they stuck to it and finished it!

We finished up with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

It’s really quite a masterpiece!  And already, Clark and Luci can recite each planet in order and tell a little about each of them!  So now we are going to work on reinforcing this information.

A Solar System Model

I set William and Luci up with some playdough, so that I could help Clark with his next project…

…the obligatory Solar System model.  I’m far to cheap to buy it at the store, so instead we went and bought several different shaped Styrofoam balls for the planet, a larger half-circle Styrofoam ball for the sun and some thin wooden sticks to put it all together.  This can’t be hard – right?!

Clark painted the half-circle yellow and got started on painting the first few planets.  We found the best way to do this was to insert the wooden sticks into all of the balls first.  Clark could then hold the stick while he painted the planet.

Hint of the Day

Don’t use tempura paints on Styrofoam!!!  It will peel off when it dries!  Thankfully, we didn’t get too far and were able to peel the remaining paint off in order to start over again with acrylic paints!

So we got started again, this time using acrylic paints.  Clark worked on his Solar System Model and Luci worked on a butterfly frame – because there is no way she is going to be left out of any aspect of homeschooling!

As a guide, we used a Kindle book, we had gotten off of Amazon (it’s free!), A Look at our Solar System: A Children’s Picture Book about Space. It has great pictures of each planet, so Clark used them as a reference as he painted each Styrofoam ball.  He incorporated what he had learned about each planet. He made Mars red, included a huge red storm on Jupiter, made the big gas planets bluish and tried hard to replicate the earth’s oceans and land masses.

Sitting beside her big brother, Luci worked carefully at putting pink dots on her yellow butterfly frame.

The Final Result

Clark finished our Solar System Model by sticking each of the planets into the sun.  Each skewer was a different length, so each planet varies in distance from the sun.  Clark has already claimed the model for his room.

Want a few more solar system resources? Check out How to Learn About the Solar System in 50 Awesome Ways.