Our science curriculum had a short lesson on the solar system. It was long enough however to create interest in the girls and so we ended up turning it into a unit study. We even built our own solar system, pictured below. Directions for building your own can be found here.
Books we used:
Earth and the Solar System; by Crabtree Publishing
Experiments With the Sun and the Moon; by Salvatore Tocci
Pluto, From Planet to Dwarf; by Elaine Landau
Earth and Mars; by Rosalind Mist
Mercury and Venus; by Rosalind Mist
Jupiter and Saturn; by Rosalind Mist
Uranus, Neptune and the Dwarf Planets; by Rosalind Mist
We created our own solar system notebook using free printables from ABC Teach, Coloring Castle and Classroom Jr. Homeschool Views offers an entire free unit study with free printables. Teacher Planet offers a ton of activities, lessons and even clipart. We also used Enchanted Learning to access this lovely solar system book below. This one was for member only, so I can’t share the direct link (but membership is REALLY worth the cost).
We also got to look at some real photos, courtesy of NASA and also here. Then for a little added fun, we signed up for the NASA Kid’s Club.
To finish of our study, we took a field trip to the John C. Wells Planetarium. The kids and I both really enjoyed this field trip! We opted for the show with Molecularium and it was really cute. The professor in charge was super personable and spent a lot of time talking with Olivia and Lindsey. He showed us how to located Jupiter tonight; and he was surprised (and truthfully, so was I) with the amount of facts Olivia knew about Jupiter. For me it was one of those “OMG! They really ARE learning!” moments.
we're about to study the solar system and I cam across your post--thanks for sharing!!
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