The kids have been really excited to start learning about Saturn.
I agree that it is the most intriguing and beautiful planet (besides Earth!)
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Before we even started our lesson this week, we did our craft. We made our own Ringed Planets by painting Styrofoam balls (cut in half) and gluing a CD in-between the layers.
We used tempera paints, a multi-pack of Styrofoam balls, and blank CD’s. I think it would be fine to color the balls with markers too.
Each of the kids painted their planet however they chose. Once they were dry, I laced a string through one half so that we could hang the planets up in our school room. Then I glued the two halves together with the disc in-between, using a hot glue gun.
We made a KWL chart for Saturn before starting our lesson. What we Know, what we Want to know, and what we Learned.
This had become a really powerful tool for our homeschool, and we plan to continue using this technique to teach other subjects as well.
We did a very similar lesson plan with Uranus, using a KWL chart, our homemade workbook, and investigative reading skills to discover more about the planet Uranus. One interesting fact that Isaac discovered was that it would take 50 Earths to fill the planet Uranus. So we did a little experiment to see how that would look…
Isaac counted out 50 marbles to represent the 50 Earths…
Then he used a pipe cleaner to create Uranus just the size to fit all of the marbles into it.
We finished off with some review of the Planet Song, our File Folder Game, and played Planet Quest again!
Next: Neptune, Pluto, and Constellations!
To see the rest of the Solar System posts, click here!
2 comments:
Very cool ideas! I love how your ringed planets turned out.
The Uranus experiment is also cool.
It really helps to see what has worked for veteran homeschooling moms like you.
Thank you Mrs. Jenny! All of the paint peeled off the planets after the kids played with them...we had to go back over them with markers instead (Just in case you try it!)
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