Exporing Space, Solar Systems from Air Dry Clay

Solar Systems with Crayola Air Dry Clay…they turn out pretty awesome! 

One of my favorite Reading Streets selection is called Exploring Space with an Astronaut. It is full of pictures of actual astronauts in space doing jobs on the space shuttle and space station.

I love this Reading Streets book Exploring Space With an Astronaut. The kids love it too! 

 I love the study of space and so do the students. There is so much we are just learning due to better satellites, telescopes and current photographs.

We look at star charts and constellations and earn a little about each of the planets too. 

We finished our Solar Systems out of Crayola Air Dry Clay a while ago. We had been studying the Sun, Stars and the Solar System with the planets in Science after reading our Reading Streets story Exploring Space with an Astronaut by Patricia J. Murphy. A neat Quia with ideas to add extensions to the story is HERE.

Here are our finished Crayola Air Dry Clay Solar Systems 
Some fast finisher activities and songs 
We wrote little mini books and had a page for the Sun, Moon, and each Planet too! 
Websites for more great space information and videos:

Here are our awesome solar systems. We also made some STARs on a stick, read poems about stars and looked at constellations.

Planets made with Crayola Air Dry Clay….a fun medium for that marbling look. 

Here are the Solar System books we wrote…
It’s aways a lot of fun to look through the books I have on each planet and come up with some interesting facts to add to our books. It is surprising how many facts the kids already know. They really enjoy learning about space. 
There was a page on each of the planets…and the sun and moon too. 
Another fun book about the life of an astronaut…..
We sang songs about the planets and learned “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. Each of these words has the same letter as the planets in order!

Here is a sampling of some GREAT SPACE BOOKS:

 Me and My Place in Space  by Joan Sweeney

Find the Constellations by H. A. Rey

Postcards From the Planets

I Want to Be an Astronaut by Byron Barton

We looked at planet books at centers and read lots of books on space…

1plus1equals1  has some cute Planet VOCABULARY CARDS  that I think would be fun for kids to use to explore or write sentences with at centers.

It is a really fun science unit. 

Air Dry Crayola clay makes great planets. Kids can add marker dots and then roll and swirl the clay till it marbles!! 

Here is a song from hsprintables on the planets.It is to the tune of “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain”. It’s a cute one the kids loved singing! Hope you enjoyed our Solar Systems!