1.Relative Size of each planet
2.The order of planets from the Sun
3.Some fun facts about each planet
While I was making dough for chapati,she asked me pointing to a ball of dough if this were earth how would Mars be? Soon one thing lead to another and the next three days we were both kept inspired and engaged in making a salt dough solar system. Here's how it went
Day 1-Learning the colors of the Planet
I got her to color the planets in the solar system,we picked up this one from the internet.
P.S: Pluto is no longer considered a planet in the solar system and has been reduced to a dwarf planet.My daughter was taught the same at school and so she asked me to cut the dwarf planet Pluto off. She's a little picky:-). For the purpose of this project we maintained that the solar system has only 8 planets.
After some googling we chose to color the planets as below since it appears there is no consensus among the various google sources on the colors.
| Planet | Color |
|---|---|
| Mercury | Grey |
| Venus | Mix of yellow,white and orange |
| Earth | Blue with a little white to show clouds |
| Mars | Red |
| Jupiter | Light Brown and light Orange |
| Saturn | Dark Orange with little brown.The wings yellow |
| Uranus | Dark Blue |
| Neptune | Light blue |
This formed the basis for coloring our future dough planets.
Day 2-Learning the sizes of the planet and creating them
We decided to make the dough planets the next day.Since we planned to keep them as a memory, we decided to make them from salt dough,we had previously made foot prints for fathers day from the same.
Recipe for salt dough
1 Cup Maida
1/2 cup Salt
Little less than 1/2 cup water
We mixed all the ingredients to form a chapati like dough.Then we made the planets.For the sizing of the planets,we decided to go by relative sizing as in if Mercury(smallest planet currently in the Solar system)was dimension of 1,Mars was 2,Earth and Venus were around 5,Uranus and Neptune around 10,Jupiter around 20 and Saturn just a little smaller than Jupiter.If you want to follow accurate measures you could use the sizing mentioned in this site.We also added a small wing to Saturn.
Once the planet balls(yes we retained our chapati inspiration) were made we set them to bake at 450.The larger planets(jupiter,Saturn,Neptune and Uranus) were kept for 10 minutes and the smaller for 4-5 minutes since they began to turn black.You can also do the smaller ones in the microwave for 3 minutes though you will need to let them cool down a bit.
Once the planets cooled down(hehehe feels funny to put it that way with global warming on the rise),my daughter began coloring them based on the sheet we prepared the day before.We used Washable Colors,the only ones I feel safe giving her.We then let them dry overnight.
Day 3 -Putting the planets in orbit
Honestly when we started out,the idea was to simply have fun but on day 3,we decided why not go one stretch and put together a display for her pre-school class.Since we didn't want to make a Sun as well(Sun=lots of dough),my daugther with some help figured the spelling of sun and wrote in a sheet of paper and colored it yellow.I cut that into a quarter circle.Inspired by this picture on google,we cut out a piece of black cardboard and began drawing out some orbits from one corner where we stuck the sun.Then came the super fun part.I asked her to pick out the planets we made and place in the orbits in correct order.She did a great job of not only remembering their names but also the order.Grandad helped stick the planets on the orbit and finally added some tiny label for each planet.
We have been having a lot of fun referring to this model each time we read a book about Space. My husband was shocked when my daughter pointed to one side of earth and said "Our house is here daddy.Thatha's house is here( pointing to the other side),thats why we go in airplane for 1 day. They also live on earth".She of course added "Everybody lives on earth but not the bad guys".Well that is just wishful thinking for now.We had a fun filled week and a great inspiration to get me to blog after more than 6 long years.
