Exploring Our Solar System

As we mentioned in an earlier post the children had many questions about Space.
Many of their questions were about the planets,  the sun, moon and stars.
We set out to do a bit of exploring of our solar system.
We read books,  used our overhead projector,  
traced the planets in our solar system, 
and  colored beautiful pictures of the sun, learning that it's the star that gives us heat and light.
Next, we took on the big project of creating our solar system in 3-d.
This project had many steps,  the first being tear up newspaper and soak it in a bucket of water over night.
We then squeezed all the water out and formed various sized balls using glue.
When they were dry everyone had a chance to match the planets in our "Space" book. This gave us a great opportunity to have lots of discussion about how different in size the planets are. 
We painted the planets and constructed a ring around Saturn.
When we were finished we hung them in our studio.
There is still so much to explore about space, so many more questions to answer.














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