Solar System Lesson

This year for science we are studying astronomy.   I am using the Young Explorer Series, Exploring Creation with Astronomy curriculum by Apoilogia Educational Ministries.   The book goes through the introduction which covered a brief history of astronomy.   We also covered the planets, Copernicus, Galileo, and NASA.  The book suggested an activity in which you hang balloons of varying sizes from the ceiling to approximate the size and distance of each planet from the sun.   While browsing Michael's, I found a Jolee’s sticker sheet that had each of the planets and a title flag.  This sticker pack gave me an idea to take a roll of paper I already had and line the planet stickers up on it with scaled distances.   Here are my materials: a tape measure, a long roll of paper, the jolee's sticker set, and a calcuation of the scaled distances.  

My mother-in-law is a retired math teacher.  I asked her about the best way to calculate the distance from the sun to the individual planets down to something I could represent in my home.   I used the Usborne Complete Book of Astronomy & Science for the data.   My mother-in-law calculated the distance into a scale that would span twelve feet.  She started with a simple porportion that equated 6000 km to 10 feet, and solved for how many km to 1 foot.   She found x to be 600 km.   Then using ratios she found the scaled distances using the data provided by the Usborne book.  She did some rounding to simplify the calculations. 

The kids had no idea how far the project would stretch when we started.   We started with Mercury placed 1.2 inches from the sun.   Then, we went to Venus which was two inches.  Earth was three inches.  Mars 4 inches.  Jupiter was one foot, 2 inches, Saturn is 2 feet, 4 inches, Uranus is 4 feet, 9 inches, Neptune is 7 feet, 5 inches.   Pluto, the binary planet, is 10 feet.   We included Pluto just because the kids have heard of it.  This a close up of the whiteboard.

As we started the lesson, the kids were unimpressed with Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.   Things become interesting with the jump to Jupiter.   They were pretty excited as we placed the rest of the planets. 

We added the rest of the planets.  The kids were very excited by the size of the model.   They could lay down end to end and stretch to equal the span.  

We officially start back to school Monday, but did some science this week to connect to our trip last weekend to Space Center Houston.   Using the sticker to make this concrete representation of our solar system was fun and easy.   The activity took about 30 minutes due to the teaching time as well as the construction of the project.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Genesis 1:1