Do you know how big our sun is compared to our home planet? Can you visualize that? After our model solar system activity, we got a good idea for the sizes of the planets.
Originally I’d really hoped to take the kids on an adventure around town showing the scale and distance apart, but even if I had earth as a speck, we’d still be driving a lot (so far apart are the planets). I think for older kids, having them do the research themselves and scout locations around town by converting the distances would be a fun challenge. I’m filing that away for a few years from now.
As for this year, we made a giant painted, paper sun and to scale tiny planets from the comfort of our homeschool classroom.
We used this site to calculate the sizes:
We measured, painted and cut. Easy peezy, fun!
