Solar System Project

My 10 year old recently had an assignment to build a model of the solar system for her 5th grade class.  Here's what she put together, mostly on her own.

My 10 yr old's Solar System model.

She did an excellent job!.  Her and mom went to the craft store to look for supplies.  They went the easy approach and just purchased a Solar System model kit that already had the spherical foam balls cut to various sizes.  Hey, don't knock us!  There's only so much time in the life of two working parents with two kids doing 18,000 things at once!  :-)  Cutting foam spheres out of a block did not fit in the schedule!  My 10 year old looked up the colors of the planets and did all of the painting. 

At first I was all about helping her figure out how to make the planet sizes and distances to scale.  That quickly ended when I realized how impossible that would be on a board this size.  The inner planets would be very squished together and the outer planets spread very far apart.  Even sizes would be difficult, if not impossible, as 1,300 Earths fit inside Jupiter.  That would require a HUGE ball for Jupiter or a really, really tiny ball for Earth (and the other terrestrial planets. 

One note in the image above.  It looks like the last planet is labeled as Pluto.  The bottom part of the image is cut off.  There's a tag for Neptune (not shown) and a small sphere for Pluto (not shown; dwarf planet). 

In the end my 10 year old had a lot of fun with this project.  She looked up and picked out a fact for each of the planets and had a blast constructing it.