Earth Day is observed on April 22 every year, and is the day considered to be the start of a global movement to save the environment. For young kids, this day might not sound very important, but we can always do little things at home to ensure that they are at least aware of how people are trying to help save the earth and everything in it.
This DIY Solar System craft is for the preschoolers and kindergartners, who don’t know that the earth we live on is just one among many planets and how these planets are related to the sun. This is a simple yet useful way to introduce that concept and also for some fun quizzes – Which planet is farthest from the sun? Which is the largest planet?
DIY Solar System
Balls of different sizes to make planets
Black chart paper
Glue, scissors, tape
1. The first thing to do is to gather your supplies, most importantly the balls to make your planets. Styrofoam balls are your best bet, as they’re easy to paint and hang. Other options are ping pong balls, balloons, stress balls, pom poms or beads. I used a mix of these. Check out details about the sizes of the planets in relation to each other, to help you select the right size of balls. Since this DIY is an introduction to small kids, it needn’t be very accurate or exactly to scale.
2. Quite a few of supplies used in this craft were from the Glitter foam for the sun, silver pipe cleaner for Saturn’s rings, star stickers etc. You can also use an orange ball for the sun, but I wanted it to be distinct from the planets.
3. Cut open a cereal box as shown in the picture. Cut out black chart to fit the open box. Spread glue over the box and stick on the black chart paper.
4. Paint the planets if needed and let them dry. For Saturn’s rings, I used a bit of silver pipe cleaner, twisted around a Styrofoam ball painted yellow. For the sun, cut out two identical sun shaped pieces out of glitter foam and stick them back to back, so that the glitter is on both sides.
5. Cut out a circular piece of cardboard and draw 8 orbits with a compass. Mark points on each orbit where the planet will be hung from.
6. Attach each planet to transparent string and fix each planet in the right orbit according to its distance from the sun. As our focus is on Earth day, you can stick on white squiggles to a plain blue pom pom to make the earth more distinct from the rest!
7. Attach the orbit circle along with all the attached planets to the bottom of the top of the cereal box, and then cover it with a larger piece of cardboard. Tape everything in place.
Your solar system is now complete!!
If you want to make it more to scale, use larger balls for Jupiter and Saturn and obviously, a much larger sun! This is a very simple craft project which doesn’t require too many supplies. Perfect to get your little pirate or princess interested in outer space!