Exploring Space

This week we have been finishing off our space unit study. We talked about the constellations and researched some stories behind them. We had a go at making our own constellations by splattering paint and then looking for images in our "sky" just like ancient peoples did in the heavens above.

We also made a scale model of the solar system that was around 800m long! For that we had to use a large stretch of our road and lots of different sized balls spread out along it to represent the Sun and the planets. Find out how to do it here. Our Sun was a football whilst the planets ranged from a bouncy ball for Jupiter to a pin head for the dwarf planet Pluto. Earth was represented by a peppercorn. The children loved pacing out the distances between the planets and this activity really shows the relative sizes of the planets (and Sun) and the empty space between them. The neighbours probably wondered what the crazy family was up to this time!

The planets