The reason why I wanted to include Pluto was that I also wanted to read my co-op class this hilarious book told from the point of view of the demoted planet. (My full review of Pluto Gets the Call is here.) As I read the book in class, I passed around the laminated planets for the kids to compare. This let them experience firsthand how much smaller Pluto is than all the others.

Even more impressive than the relative size of the planets to each other is their relative size compared to the Sun. My younger kids and I spent about 30 minutes measuring and painting a Sun a few days before class. In the co-op, I had the students guess how big they thought the Sun would be with their arms before I unveiled our creation for dramatic effect. When I originally did this Sun activity, I just accepted the fact that the whole Sun was not going to fit on my butcher paper. This time around, I wanted to make a big impact, so I used two pieces of butcher paper side by side to fit the whole thing. The results were pretty impressive.

Laying the planets, especially Pluto, on top of the Sun shows how incredibly small all of the planets are compared to our favorite star. Pluto may be the only dwarf planet in the group, but all of the planets are dwarfed by this monstrosity.

Relative Size of Pluto Details

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: about an hour altogether to laminate all the planets and measure and paint the Sun
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable planets. Butcher paper and paint for the Sun require a couple dollars in used supplies. Might be a bigger investment if you don’t already have butcher paper and paint lying around.

Materials

• Free printable major planets
• Free printable Pluto
• Butcher paper
• Yellow paint (we also added a little red paint to add some fun variation)
• Laminating sheets

Supplies

• laminator
• scissors
• paintbrushes
• Optional: Pluto Gets the Call (this book complements the activity so well!)

Instructions

1. First, print out all of the major planets and Pluto.
2. Cut out the planets and labels, then laminate them and cut out the laminated pieces.
   
3. Follow the instructions on this post to make a Sun on the same scale. The radius should be 33″.
   

Have fun getting a sense of the scale of our solar system!

Related Links

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Of course, I started our summer of astronomy fun with a family viewing of Space Camp. (Seriously, how is that movie not more popular?) I was instantly transported back to my 8 year old self, aware that the plot was far-fetched, but loving it nonetheless. My own kids were riveted. Personally, I think it is a fantastic family movie (but be aware that there is at least one use of the word “shit” and a reference to big hands that had my husband and I glancing at each other). Thankfully, the “mature” content went over my kids heads. They loved it.

To study space, we’ve also watched some Magic School Bus episodes related to planets and meteors and a couple episodes of Cosmos on Netflix. Each night my kids and I go outside and spend about 10 minutes looking at the sky before bed. We started out observing the moon every day so that we would know if it was waxing or waning. My older 2 kids can now reliably find the Big Dipper, Jupiter, Mars, sometimes the Little Dipper if it’s dark enough, and the stars Polaris, Arcturus, and Vega. We use the app, SkyView Free, to check that we’ve identified correctly. In that app, you can ask it to tell you where the International Space Station (ISS) and other fun things are.

Every night over the past couple weeks, my son has been disappointed that the ISS is never in view. I remembered that once while we were camping several years ago, my husband thought he saw the International Space Station, a bright light arching across the sky. I was skeptical it was actually the space station and not a plane or other satellite. When we got home the next day, I looked it up. He was right. The ISS had been predicted to cross over the sky in our area at about 9:30 pm, the exact time my husband had spotted it.

When my son became fixated on spotting the International Space Station, I knew it was a wish I could make happen. Unfortunately, in the near future all the viewing windows near us were at around 4 in the morning. To my kids, I think the middle-of-the-night aspect made the whole adventure more appealing.

This morning, I woke my 6 and 8 year olds up at 4:15 am and we went outside with blankets and flashlights. The space station was supposed to be visible from 4:23 to 4:26 am. At 4:26 am, I told my kids, “I’m sorry, guys. I guess we missed it. I don’t know what happened. Maybe the moon is too bright tonight or something.”

Just then, my 8 year old yelled, “There it is!!!” He was right. It was about 3 minutes later than I expected, but we were able to watch the bright light traverse across the sky. There is no way we could have missed it. Now that we’ve spent the past couple weeks looking at planes and smaller satellites, I understand how my husband knew it was the ISS on that camping trip all those year ago.

“There are people in there, you know,” I said to my kids. “Really?” asked my 6 year old, skeptically. Yep, it’s mind-blowing for me too, kid. If you’re looking for a resource to learn more about the ISS with your kindergarten or elementary-aged kids, my family enjoyed poring over the 4 page spread on the International Space Station in the Big Book of Rockets and Spacecraft.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~15 minutes (unfortunately, this will almost certainly cut into your kids sleeping time)
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free

Supplies:

• A computer to use NASA’s Spot the Station website
• An alarm clock (if you need to wake up early in the morning, though in some places, it might be visible after sunset instead of before sunrise)
• Flashlights (to reduce light pollution, don’t turn on any outdoor lights)
• Jackets (unless you live somewhere that it’s warm at night)
• Shoes (you don’t want to be hunting for them in the middle of the night)
• Blanket (if you’ll be sitting on the ground)
• Compass (optional, but you’ll want to at least have a general idea of the directions)
• Smartphone (optional, we didn’t use one during our viewing, but an app like SkyView Free will tell you exactly where the ISS is)

Instructions:

1. Go to the website, NASA’s Spot the Station.
2. Click on the magnifying glass on the map.



3. Type in your location. The map should take you to your area. You want to find the blue pin closest to your exact location. Yellow circles are basically blue pins that are so close together they’ve been combined, but you can click on them to see the individual blue pins.



4. Once you’ve clicked on the blue pin closest to you, click the link called “View Sighting Opportunities.”



5. Now you get to analyze your opportunities. There are 3 things to take into consideration. One is the Date column which lists the viewing time. Personally, as a night owl, I would prefer an evening viewing to an early morning viewing, but that wasn’t an option for my family in the foreseeable future. The second is the Visible column which lists how many minutes the Space Station will be visible. Longer is typically better as it decreases the chances of missing it. The third consideration is the Max Height. This basically specifies how high in the sky the Space Station will get. Higher is better, since it decreases the chances that your view will be obstructed by houses, trees, and anything else that might be in the way.
   We chose this morning to view the ISS because the duration was the longest it would be in the near future and the maximum height was 47 degrees, which was considerably higher than many of the other opportunities.
6. Now that you’ve chosen a date and time, you need to figure out which way to look. The Appears column tells you which direction the ISS will appear and the Disappears column tells you which direction it is headed. You can use a compass if you are not sure. For us, the ISS appeared in the west and headed towards NNE.
7. The night before you plan to view the ISS, you have some planning to do. Set an alarm if needed. Plan to be outside and observing at least 5 to 10 minutes before the expected pass. We were lucky in that the ISS passed 3 minutes after the expected time. If it had passed 3 minutes before, we probably would have missed it, because I wasn’t expecting the timing to be off at all.
8. Especially if you will be waking up in the middle of the night, gather all your supplies before you go to bed. Put yours and your kids’ jackets and shoes together with a blanket to sit on and some flashlights. You don’t want to turn on any outdoor lights when you go outside to keep your eyes adjusted to the dark.
9. About 15 minutes before the pass, make sure everyone is awake and getting their shoes and jackets on.
10. Head outside, set up your blanket, and lay down to view the stars.
11. Monitor the whole path the ISS is expected to take, keeping an especially close watch on the “Appear” direction.
12. Be patient! I was ready to give up and go inside when my son suddenly spotted the ISS.

Have fun viewing the International Space Station!

Click here for more Astronomy activities for kids.

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My toddler, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. The times that I really need my kids to all play nicely by themselves seem to coincide with the times that he most desperately needs my attention. Wouldn’t it be great if there were one place to go to find a bunch of ideas for keeping these young kids occupied during moments of desperation? There is. I am happy to be a part of Teach Me Mommy’s A-Z of Busy Bags series, bringing up the rear with Z is for Ziplock.

To be honest, I signed up for the letter Z, because it gave me the most time to come up with an idea. I was pretty sure I wanted to do something with zip-locking bags, because there are plenty of easy ideas for entertaining young kids…you could put any fun substances inside (paint, shaving cream, ketchup) and kids will have a great time just squeezing it. I thought maybe an I-spy bag would be fun, filled with sand and objects to hunt for like a coin, button, or marble. However, my husband thought all those choking hazards combined with tiny granules that get everywhere was a disaster waiting to happen.

I ended up settling on this Solar System I-Spy activity. It’s a fun sensory experience for my toddler, while using the checklist as a game makes the activity both educational and fun for my preschooler and kindergartner as well. With older kids, this activity could be combined with my free, printable Solar System cards or Relative Sizes of Planets activity for extra astronomy learning.

Recommended Age Range: Baby/Toddler, Preschool, Kindergarten
Time Required: ~45 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, less than $2 in used supplies

Materials:

• paper (for printing first 2 pages of Ziplock Solar System I-Spy Busy Bag printable)
• 2 laminating pouches
• 1 quart size ziplock bag (brand not important)
• inexpensive hair gel (preferable clear, blue, or purple — I used about 10 ounces)
• glitter (preferably gold, silver, or both)
• blue food dye

Supplies & Tools:

• laminator
• scissors

Instructions:

1. First, print out the first 2 pages of the Ziplock Solar System I-Spy Busy Bag document, if you haven’t already done so.
2. Laminate the checklist to make it reusable when using a dry erase marker.
3. Cut out all the objects on the first page.



4. Laminate all the objects that you just finished cutting out.



5. Now that they’ve been laminated, cut the objects out again leaving a border to ensure liquid does not seep inside.



6. Fill the ziplock bag with hair gel. I used approximately one third of my 26 ounce bottle, but you can use more or less as desired.



7. Sprinkle in a little glitter to represent “stars.” (I didn’t really use too much. Maybe 1/4 teaspoon each of silver and gold, though again, exact quantities are not important.)



8. Add the space objects to your bag. I added mine in one big pile, but I also had to spend 10 minutes separating them all from each other. I recommend adding a few at a time so they don’t overlap, and then sealing the bag and squishing them to the bottom before adding more. Almost done!



9. Lastly, add some blue food coloring to your bag and squish it around to make the “I-Spy” aspect of the activity more challenging. I added 6 drops total.

To use the busy bag, your child simply has to press on the outside of the bag to find each of the items on the checklist. Depending on how much food coloring you use, this task can be easy or hard.

If you like this activity, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to be notified of all new projects and free printables as well as obtain access to a page filled with exclusive subscriber freebies. Also, be sure to check out all the wonderful ideas in the A-Z of Busy Bag series!

Click here for more Astronomy activities for kids.

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This project uses the free Relative Size of Planets printable provided in a previous post. (ETA: I recently created another post with Pluto as well!) Combining that printable with Velcro and butcher paper allowed us to make this fun, interactive, hands-on tool for learning not only how big the planets are relative to each other and to the sun but to also start to learn their order from the sun.

Honestly, I knew that Earth was going to be small relative to the sun, but personally, I found this activity to be incredibly humbling. It’s amazing to think about how much activity and life there is on planet Earth for being such a tiny little speck on a cosmic scale.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: About $12 in used supplies (Most of the cost is the Velcro strip. Admittedly, a roll of butcher paper can be expensive, though you don’t need much. We use ours all the time and it lasts forever, making it a great investment in my opinion.)

Materials:

• The Relative Sizes of Planets printable from the Relative Sizes of Planets post
• 5 laminating pouches (or contact paper)
• At least 110″/280 cm of butcher paper
• Yellow, red, and/or orange paint. (I used powdered paint.)
• At least 33″/84 cm of yarn or string (color not important)
• 6 ft/1.8 m of sticky back Velcro

Supplies & Tools:

• Tape measure
• Laminator (if using laminating pouches)
• Scissors
• Containers to hold paint
• Paint Brushes
• Tape (I used painters tape so it would peel easily from paper where needed and packing tape to attach our “poster” to the wall.)
• Pencil

Instructions:

1. 1. First, print out the Relative Sizes of Planets printable, cut out the pieces, and laminate them. See the Relative Sizes of Planets post for more details.
   2. Next, measure out a piece of butcher paper that is at least 110 inches (280 cm). I didn’t have enough space to measure all 110″ at once, so I measured 55″, marked lightly with a pencil, then measured 55″ again before cutting.

1. 1. Mark the center of your sun. The Sun’s radius should be 33″ (~84 cm) based on the size of the planets, so first I marked 35″ (~89 cm) from the short edge of the paper from about the middle.
      
      To make sure I was in the middle, next I measured half the butcher paper width from the long edge (18″ in my case) to find the exact location of the center of the sun.
      
      Obviously, the entire sun will not fit on the butcher paper. I considered using 2 pieces of butcher paper stacked on top of each other so that I could fit the entire sun (and maybe when my 3 year old asked why the sun was a rectangle, I should have just gone ahead and done that), but I envision rolling this up and saving it and I felt the extra paper would make it too unwieldy. I might go back and make some extra sun “flaps” at some point.
   2. Place a knot in some yarn or string and tape it to your sun’s center.

I should point out that to be most precise, you should just fix the knot in place and not the yarn to the side, but the error in doing it the way shown is small.

1. 1. Next measure out the yarn to 33 inches (~84 cm) and tie a pencil at that distance. Make sure the yarn is slightly taut, so that when you move the pencil around, it is not hard to keep the yarn at that same tension.

1. 1. Basically, you are going to use your yarn and pencil as an extra large compass. Move your pencil over to the edge of the paper then draw a circular curve, keeping the distance at as close to 33″ as possible. You can use the tape measure to draw a few reference dots if you want, but it’s not important to be extremely precise.
   2. Next flip the knot at the Sun’s center around.

1. 1. Draw the curve on the other side.

1. 1. Now comes the fun (or nerve-racking) part. Give your kids some paint in the color of your choice and some paint brushes and let them go wild. To make the sun look slightly more interesting, I gave my kids 2 different shades of orange. I also painted the edges for them to make it easier for them to stay inside the lines.

1. 1. Once the sun is completely painted, give it few hours to dry.

1. 1. Once it’s dry, hang it on the wall. (You do need quite a bit of wall space for this project. If that’s impossible given your space, consider hanging the poster on an exterior wall or even leaving it on the floor for a less permanent activity. You could even make your sun out of sidewalk chalk and eliminate the need for butcher paper all together.)

1. 1. Cut about an inch off of the soft side of your 6 foot Velcro strip and save it for later. (It will be used to attach the control card to the poster.)

1. 1. Fold the soft Velcro strip and cut it in half.
   2. Use your tape measure and a pencil to mark the center of the butcher paper close to the sun and near the end of the paper. Then remove the backing from a half strip of soft Velcro and stick it to the paper.

1. 1. Use your tape measure to mark about 5″ above your first Velcro line and attach your second strip of soft Velcro.
   2. Attach small pieces of prickly Velcro to the backs of all the planets, planet labels, and control card. You’ll need to cut the pieces extra small for the smallest planets.

1. 1. Place your planets and labels onto the Velcro strips using the control card to make sure they are in the correct place.

1. 1. Use the extra small piece of soft Velcro you saved to attach your control card to the poster. We put ours along the top edge, but depending on the height of the kids who will be using the poster, you might want to put it lower.

To have your kids use this activity, take all the planets and labels off, then have your child place the planets and labels on as you learn about the planets in order. To make it more fun, use a picture book like There’s No Place Like Space (affiliate link). Once your child thinks they know all the planets and their order, they can try to place the planets and labels back on from memory, then use the control card to see if they were right.

Click here for more Astronomy activities for kids.

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The post Relative Size of the Sun Activity appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

These universe cards feature space terms outside our solar system such as “black hole,” “pulsar,” and “brown dwarf” as well as actual space structures like the Helix nebula and Andromeda Galaxy. When making these cards, I mainly used the National Geographic Space Encyclopedia for reference.

The following universe-related vocabulary words are included:

• universe
• Big Bang
• Milky Way Galaxy
• Andromeda Galaxy
• black hole
• neutron star
• Eagle Nebula
• Cat’s Eye Nebula
• Crab Nebula
• Carina Nebula
• Helix Nebula
• Oort Cloud
• star
• galaxy
• constellation
• nebula
• supernova
• pulsar
• quasar
• globular cluster
• dark matter
• gamma ray bursts
• white dwarf
• brown dwarf

As with the solar system cards, my kids had fun playing with these universe cards even though they are pretty young. My older son is learning to sound out words, so he was able to match label cards to the pictures with some help. For example, I’ll say, “This card shows a picture of the universe (or Milky Way galaxy/pulsar/supernova/etc). Which card do you think goes with it?” He’s not 100% reading, but he can usually figure it out, especially using the control cards to compare. My preschooler likes to match the picture cards to the same picture on the control cards. Older kids could use these cards as a Montessori-style self-correcting activity to test their own knowledge or they could be used for a multi-player, memory-style matching game.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $3 in used supplies (Even cheaper if you don’t laminate them or use contact paper instead.)

Materials:

• paper (for printing Universe Cards and the corresponding Control Cards)
• laminating pouches

Supplies & Tools:

• laminator (affiliate link)
• scissors or paper cutter

Instructions:

1. Print the Universe Cards and Control Cards. (Note: Only the first 6 pages of each document should be printed as the last 2 pages contain legal information related to sharing and image sources.)
2. Laminate the pages.
3. Cut out laminated cards.

Click here for more Astronomy activities for kids.

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These space cards are in the Montessori 3-part nomenclature card style, but I included extra information on each one to make them a little more like trading cards. I was planning to save them as an independent activity for when my 5 and half year old was a bit older, so I was surprised when all of my kids wanted to play with them right away.

My baby mostly just wanted to chew on them, but they’re laminated, so it was okay. My 5 and half year old used the control cards to figure out how to match the picture and information cards. He’s starting to read and was motivated enough to try and read each label on his own. I was especially surprised that my 3 year old found her own way to “play” as well. She essentially invented the job of helping her brother make pairs by matching just the picture cards to the control cards.

The complete set of cards includes the following space-related vocabulary terms:

• Solar System
• Sun
• Mercury
• Venus
• Earth
• Moon
• Mars
• Ceres
• Jupiter
• Saturn
• Uranus
• Neptune
• Pluto
• Haumea
• Makemake
• Eris
• terrestrial planets
• giant planets
• dwarf planets
• asteroids
• meteors
• comets
• asteroid belt
• Kuiper belt

If you’re looking for a book to go along with these solar system cards, I recommend Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian (affiliate link). Since the cards themselves contain so many facts, I think the creativity in this book is a nice balance. The book contains a wide variety of poem styles, all of which my 5 and a half year old and I enjoyed. (Our favorite was the one about poor Pluto.) We checked this book out from the library, but we liked it so much I’m sure I’ll add it to our collection eventually.

If you like these cards, be sure to check out the rest of my Astronomy posts. Eventually, I hope to make cards on space exploration (going back to Copernicus and Galileo and including modern terms like space shuttle and international space station). Sign up for my newsletter to be notified when new freebies become available.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $3 in used supplies (even cheaper if you don’t laminate them or use contact paper instead.)

Materials:

• paper (for printing Solar System Cards printable and the corresponding Control Cards)
• laminating pouches

Supplies & Tools:

• laminator (affiliate link)
• scissors or paper cutter (or both)

Instructions:

1. Print the Solar System Cards and Control Cards printables. (Note: Only the first 6 pages of each document should be printed as the last 2 pages contain legal information about sharing and image sources.)
2. Laminate the pages.



3. Cut out the laminated cards.

In addition to using these cards as a self-correcting, independent activity, they can also be used for a multi-player memory-style, matching game.

Click here for more Astronomy activities for kids.

Related Links

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The post Solar System Cards appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

I made this hands on activity as a way to show my kids how tiny planet Earth is with respect to other planets in our solar system. (I’ll save the mind-blowing discovery that those planets are small compared to the sun and that our sun is just an average, little, insignificant star in our galaxy for another day.) I used Wikipedia’s data regarding the radius of each planet, so I’m fairly confident of the printable’s accuracy, though I will happily fix it if an error is discovered.

There are a several different ways to use this printable. A young child can just hold them and examine them, possibly while reading a book about space that talks about each of the planets such as this Little Kids First Big Book of Space by National Geographic. By being able to manipulate them and compare them directly, they will get a better idea of the relative size of each planet.

Older kids can try to memorize the names of all the planets and the order of the planets in terms of distance from the sun. A control card is included in the printable for the kids (or parents) to use as reference. For older kids, I recommend National Geographic’s Space Encyclopedia. For kids that need to move around to learn, I might hide the planets around a room and make the child hunt for them, then match them up to the control card so that they will be able to tell when they’ve found them all.

ETA: I am updating this post to add that if you like this post, you might want to check out my post on how to create a Sun on the same scale. Also, I recently added another post that provides everyone’s favorite dwarf planet, Pluto, on this scale as well. Enjoy!

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: About $1 in used supplies (though could be even cheaper if lamination was done with contact paper.)

Materials:

• Paper (for printing Relative Sizes of Planets printable)
• 5 Laminating pouches (or contact paper)

Supplies & Tools:

• Printer
• Scissors
• Paper trimmer (optional, but it makes cutting the straight lines easier)
• Laminator (or you can just iron laminating pouches)
• Circles template (or a quarter or bottle cap in a pinch)
• Pen or marker

Instructions:

1. Print out Relative Sizes of Planets printable. (Note: Last page does not need to be printed. It just contains legal information about sharing and where the images came from.)
2. Cut out each planet, name label, and “Our Solar System” control card.
3. Laminate everything with laminating pouches or contact paper. Not that the 4 smaller planets are so small, that before cutting them, I used a marker and circle template to draw a bigger circle around each one so they would be harder to lose.

Click here for more Astronomy activities for kids.

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