The Solar System

When we returned from Spring Break we stared the new unit on the Solar System in Science. It was nice to have the week off because I was able to take the time and make the planets! I made them out of home made paste and newspaper and then painted them all. I raffled them off at the end of the unit and gave them away to the kids to take home. I set them up in the classroom as they appear in the Solar System, with the sun in the middle and all the planets rotating around them and YES, I included Pluto, you can see him on the far left side! =]
The picture to the right is one a student make during our planet unit. She spent a lot of time on it so I hung it up on the window of the door.

Because the solar system is something that is covered in second grade what I decided to do was create a KWL chart before reading about the solar system so I would know what the students are familiar with and what we can skim over and the things that we needed to spend extra time on. It also allowed them to ask questions they were curious about with the planets. Their curiosity ranged from aliens to asteroids and to the stars. I was really surprised to see how excited and interested they were for this subject.