We are studying Astronomy in Science this year with Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Astronomy, which is a part of the Young Explorer Series.
The first weeks were spent learning the basics of what astronomy is and why we are studying it.
We learned a lot about the stars in and planets in our solar system and I am really looking forward to spending this year really exploring our solar system in more detail.
This first lesson ended with with a project to make a model solar system that hangs from your ceiling out of balloons.
The purpose of this model was to get a feel for how big the planets are compared to one another and where they are placed in relation to the sun. These model planets were not as round as real planets and the distances between them were not realistic.
Our first job was to sort the balloons by size so I could pick the right ones to blow up according to how big they were supposed to be.
One thing that I really liked about this project was that it used materials that we had on hand, or had easy access to. We used balloons of various sizes and colors, scissors, thumbtacks, ribbon, markers, measuring tape, and construction paper.
For each planet we tried to pick a balloon with a color similar to the planet’s color. We used a drawing in our science book to help with that.
I blew up the balloons and had MC help measure the approximate distance around the balloon. (shown below)
Mercury – 1 in.
Venus – 2 1/2 in.
Earth – 2 5/8 in.
Mars – 1 3/8 in.
Jupiter – 29 1/2 in.
Saturn – 25 in.
Uranus – 10 5/8 in.
Neptune – 10 1/4 in.
Pluto – 1/2 in.
For Saturn’s ring we made a circle out of construction paper to fit around the balloon for Saturn and attached it with tape.
We blew up the largest balloon I could find to represent the sun. Unfortunately the largest I had was green. Since the point of the project was to get a feel for size more than color, I went with it.
We tied a string to each balloon and used a thumbtack to hang the balloons from the ceiling in correct order.
There was only one mishap during the project when I blew Jupiter up too big and it popped. Saturn also popped after they were all hung up on the ceiling and had to be replaced.
My girls really love looking up and saying the names of the planets. I am so proud that they know the names of all of the planets in order.
They came up with their own mnemonic device to help them remember them.
My Very Excited MaryCatherine Joined Sister Under Nancy’s Pillow
We included Pluto as a planet in our solar system, but we have discussed that there is some debate as to weather it is a real planet. We did hang it with a different color ribbon to represent this.
This was such a fun project for all of us!!
Have you done any fun science projects this year?
Post linked to: Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family
lulu says
how do we do this