The Solar System

Another subject Jaxon has been asking to learn about is space, so we started last week with a unit on the Solar System. This was the first activity we did, Jaxon coloured all the planets then we put them in order. He's also watched 'The Magic School Bus- Lost in Space' which got us talking about Pluto, how it used to be considered a planet but now they call it a dwarf planet.

He also watched a short clip on Brain Pop Jr. about the Solar System and together we worked on the quiz and notebook questions.

We tried to make a mobile of the planets to hang up by glueing yarn to balloons, once dry you can pop the balloons and they look like cool balls of yarn. This task proved much too difficult and the yarn just slid off the balloons so instead we glued the yarn to card stock.

Once dry we hung up the eight planets with the Sun and labeled them all (we still have to add the rings to Saturn and Uranus).

Jaxon also coloured a picture of Earth and then we talked about ways that we can protect it, which tied into the 4 R's. When we reduce, reuse, refuse and recycle we protect the Earth, under each flap is printed one of the four R's.

Jaxon saw this craft idea when I was looking on the computer for resources and asked if we could make it! So here is his rocket ship name!

We made this fact booklet about all the planets. There is this great song on youtube about the Solar System (click here to listen)and after listening to it about 20 times a day for the past week, Jaxon could tell me most of these facts we wrote down on his own!

We also studied the phases of the moon, using oreo cookies just made it much more fun!

One last project we did was another fact booklet but with a focus on one planet. So Jaxon chose Jupiter, we checked out some books from the library about the solar system and made a little report all about Jupiter.