How to Teach About the Solar System to Children Children naturally love learning about the solar system. The sun, moon, stars and planets are fascinating to both small children who see stars twinkle in the night sky at night and older children who begin to ask harder questions such as “are there other planets with life?” or “are there other solar systems like ours?” Using a combination of illustrations, books, videos, worksheets and crafts would be an excellent way to introduce children to simple concepts and lessons on the solar system as well as more advanced concepts.
- Teach children the planets of our solar system starting with the planet closest to the sun, Mercury. It is best to teach children the planets in order because it will help them memorize better just like starting with A when teaching the alphabet. Use an illustration, poster or drawing to introduce or review the planets. A link to a set of pictures of the planets in order is included under Additional Resources. Select a video on the sun, moon, stars and planets or share a solar system song to engage children and get them more interested in learning details about the solar system. There are several solar system songs on video available online free. See Additional Resources for a link to solar system video and song clips. Be sure to always check the videos and songs for accurate facts and appropriateness before playing any in front of children or in a classroom. Complete an age-appropriate solar system set of activities, worksheets and crafts. An activity and craft combination can be created for any grade level. Common activities include coloring the planets, putting the planets in order and creating a mobile of the solar system. Easier activities for younger children can include learning to write the letter M on a moon worksheet or A for astronaut. More challenging solar system activities can include creating a larger model of the solar system to scale. Group activities can include around the world using flash cards of the planets or splitting the children into groups, each holding one planet picture and having groups compete on who can get into the “correct” order first. Wrap up the solar system lesson with a video that is more in depth than the introduction materials or that reviews the material. After children complete all the other activities, they will be ready to learn more about the exciting solar system. Higher level videos and clips on the solar system, galaxies, planets and stars can be watched by small children if the graphics are colorful or the video has a child-friendly tune in the background because the children will enjoy the colorful introduction to more challenging concepts. Create a method to test the competency of the children after learning about the solar system. Small children can be asked to label basics such as the moon, stars, Earth and sun. Older children can be asked to put the planets in order after given time to study the materials. Children can also be asked to create a report, story, song or model to test competency, which can be graded using a standard shared with the students before the assignment is turned in. Children can also be quizzed or tested on the solar system information they were taught.
- 1 What are 5 basic solar systems?
- 2 What are the objectives of teaching solar system?
- 3 What is the importance of solar system?
- 4 What kids should know about the solar system?
- 5 Why is it called solar system?
- 6 How our solar system works?
- 7 What are the objectives of teaching solar system?
- 8 How do I teach my 2 year old about the planets?
- In order from closest to the Sun, these planets are,,,,,,, and,
- Most of them orbit the Sun in paths shaped like circles.
- Most of the planets have at least one moon.
- However, they vary widely in size, temperature, and makeup.
- Scientists used to call the ninth planet.
- But in 2006 scientists decided that several objects in the solar system, including Pluto, should be called dwarf planets.
- At the outer reaches of the solar system is the Oort Cloud.
- It is a huge cloud of countless small, icy objects.
- The Oort Cloud surrounds the rest of the solar system.
- The solar system was formed about 4.7 billion years ago.
- It probably started as a loose cloud of gas and dust.
- Scientists think that a force called pulled parts of the cloud together into clumps.
- The solar system is also known as a planetary system.
- Since the 1990s scientists have found many planetary systems beyond our solar system.
- In these systems, one or more planets orbit a star—just as the eight planets in our solar system orbit the Sun.
- These planets are called extrasolar planets.
- Finding other planetary systems is not easy, however, because extrasolar planets appear much dimmer than the stars they orbit.
- There are many websites such as EarthSky, which give daily information about what planets are visible.
- For a better look buy a telescope and look at the sky from an upstairs window.
- Ask the kids to find different stars, such as the brightest or the smallest.
- If you’re in the city or can’t get a good view of the night sky, you could also take your toddler to a planetarium.
- The Sun is 93 million miles from the Earth. The light from the Sun only takes 8 minutes to travel to the Earth, but it would take Usain Bolt – the fastest man on Earth – 450 years to run from the Sun to the Earth.
- The Earth travels around the Sun in a loop that is shaped a bit like an oval. We call this the Earth’s orbit,
- The Earth is always spinning around – sometimes from where you stand on the Earth you can see the Sun (this is the daytime) and sometimes the part of the Earth where you are is facing away from the Sun so it is dark (this is the nightime). It takes 24 hours for the Earth to spin all the way around, and we call this a day. Find out more about night and day,
- There are eight planets that orbit around the Sun. In order, going from the closest planet to the Sun, to the one that is farthest away, they are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
- All of the planets and the Sun are round, like balls.
- There is a lot of difference between the planets. Some planets like Earth are made of rock, and some like Jupiter are made of gas. The hottest planet is Venus where the average temperature is 460°C, and the coldest is Uranus, which is -220°C.
- Mars is sometimes the called ‘the red planet’ because the rocks that it is made from are red. It is the closest planet to Earth, and is slightly smaller than Earth.
- The biggest planet is Jupiter. Jupiter is made of gas and is so big that you could fit 1,321 planets the size of Earth inside it. There is even a storm on Jupiter that is bigger than Earth – this storm has been blowing for hundreds of years and is called the ‘Great Red Spot’.
- Saturn is famous for having rings of small pieces of ice and dust around it. Like Jupiter, it is made of gas and is much bigger than Earth.
- The Moon is a ball of rock that orbits around the Earth, in the same way that the Earth orbits around the Sun. It is much smaller than the Earth and takes 28 days to complete one orbit. The Moon is 239,000 miles away and is the only place in the Solar System that man has travelled to apart from Earth. Find out more about human space exploration,
- Other planets have moons too. Jupiter has at least 66 of them!
- There are literally trillions of large masses in our Solar System, all orbiting around the galactic center on timescales of hundreds of millions of years.
- But there’s a viral video,, that claims that as the Solar System moves through the galaxy, it makes a vortex shape, pulling the planets behind it as it does.
- Local group, as the invisible forces from gravitation in intergalactic space must all be added up together.
- NASA, ESA; Acknowledgements: Ming Sun (UAH), and Serge Meunier And quantitatively, we not only predict, but can measure, exactly how our motion works.
- It isn’t a vortex, but what it is, exactly, is fascinating.
- Throughout it, though, the planets remain in the same plane, with no “dragging” or vortex patterns emerging.
- Although the Sun orbits within the plane of the Milky Way some 25,000-27,000 light years from the,
- Center, the orbital directions of the planets in our Solar System do not align with the galaxy at all.
- Within our local group, we can measure our speed towards the largest, massive galaxy in our cosmic backyard: Andromeda.
- It appears to be moving towards our Sun at a speed of 301 km/s, which means —when we factor in the motion of the Sun through the Milky Way — that the local group’s two most massive galaxies, Andromeda and the Milky Way, are headed towards each other at a speed of around 109 km/s.
- When you throw in the motion of the local group, you get that all of it — the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Triangulum galaxy and all the others — are moving at 627 ± 22 km/s relative to the CMB.
- That larger uncertainty, by the way, is mostly due to uncertainty in the Sun’s motion around the galactic center, which is the most difficult component to measure.
- Our planet and all the planets orbit the Sun in a plane, and the entire plane moves in an elliptical orbit through the galaxy.
- Since every star in the galaxy also moves in an ellipse, we see ourselves appear to pass in-and-out of the galactic plane periodically, on timescales of tens of millions of years, while it takes around 200-250 million years to complete one orbit around the Milky Way.
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How do you introduce the solar system for kids?
solar system The solar system consists of the Sun and everything that orbits, or travels around, the Sun. This includes the eight planets and their moons, dwarf planets, and countless asteroids, comets, and other small, icy objects. However, even with all these things, most of the solar system is empty space.
The solar system itself is only a small part of a huge system of and other objects called the, The solar system orbits around the center of the galaxy about once every 225 million years. The Milky Way galaxy is just one of billions of that in turn make up the, At the center of the solar system is a star called the,
It is the largest object in the solar system. Its diameter, or distance through its center, is 865,000 miles (1,392,000 kilometers). In addition, the Sun contains more than 99 percent of all the material in the solar system. The Sun is a very hot ball of hydrogen and helium gases.
It has a temperature, at its core, of more than 28,080,000° F (15,600,000° C). It constantly changes the hydrogen in its core into helium. This process gives out huge amounts of radiation, or energy. Living things on Earth depend on this energy, in the form of light and heat. The gases that surround the Sun shoot out a stream of tiny particles called the solar wind.
It flows outward through the whole solar system. The solar wind is what causes auroras, or displays of colored light in the night sky in parts of Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere these auroras are called the northern lights. After the Sun, the largest objects in the solar system are the,
Millions of small chunks of metal and rock called also orbit the Sun. Most asteroids are found in a ring between Mars and Jupiter. They are believed to be debris, or bits of material, left over from collisions between other bodies in the solar system. The largest asteroids are hundreds of miles in diameter, but most are much smaller.
Small asteroids regularly fall to Earth or burn up in the sky as glowing, are small chunks of dirt and ice. Billions of them orbit the Sun in very long paths shaped like ovals. When they are closest to the Sun, the Sun’s radiation causes them to glow. Most comets are too small or too distant ever to be seen from Earth.
Comets come from two parts of the outer solar system: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Beyond Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, a flat ring of millions of small, icy objects. These objects orbit the Sun at a very great distance. They are mostly 30 to 50 times farther from the Sun than Earth is.
The largest clump was squeezed together so tightly that it got very hot. This clump eventually became the Sun. Over millions of years the other clumps became the planets. The Sun’s strong gravity eventually pulled the planets into their orbits. Over time some of the leftover clumps became asteroids, comets, and other small, icy objects.
In 1957, the Sputnik 1 became the first human-made object to orbit Earth. Since then, scientists have sent many spacecraft to various parts of the solar system. Spacecraft have carried astronauts into orbit around Earth, to the, and to human-made space stations. Other spacecraft, called probes, have carried cameras and scientific equipment but no astronauts.
Space probes have landed on the planets Mars and Venus, on asteroids, and on Titan, which is one of Saturn’s moons. In addition, space probes have flown past all the planets in the solar system. They have taken many photographs and collected much valuable information.
As space probes travel farther away from Earth, they are likely to discover more extrasolar planets. : solar system
How do you explain planets to children?
Planets are 
large natural objects that orbit, or travel around, stars. Eight planets orbit the star called the Sun, In order from the closest to the Sun, these planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, The solar system is the collection of the Sun and the objects that orbit around it, including the eight planets.
Planets differ from other objects such as comets, asteroids, and meteors. In general, planets are the largest objects in the solar system after the Sun. Most of them orbit the Sun in a path shaped like a circle. They also have an atmosphere, or a layer of gases surrounding them. Most of the planets have at least one moon.
However, scientists have long debated what makes a planet a planet. For many years most people believed that there were nine planets in the solar system. This number included Pluto, which was discovered in 1930. Pluto is a planetlike object that is usually beyond Neptune.
What is solar system in simple words?
: the sun together with the group of celestial bodies that are held by its attraction and revolve around it also : a similar system centered on another star
What are 5 basic solar systems?
The Solar System | King’s Park Primary and Nursery School What is the solar system? 
The Solar System is made up of the Sun and the celestial objects that are bound to it by its gravity: the eight planets and five dwarf planets, their 173 known moons, and billions of small bodies, such as asteroids, icy kuiper belt objects, comets, meteoroids, and interplanetary dust. Although the farthest planet is over four billion kilometers away from the earth, all eight planets can be seen in the night sky, using a telescope or binoculars – as long as you know where to look!
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| So how big is the solar system? NASA launched an unmanned space probe in 1977, called Voyager 1. Its job was to fly away from Earth, through the solar system, visiting planets on the way, sending back pictures and information for NASA scientists to study. Voyager has sent back pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, and is still travelling away from earth. It is now the farthest travelled space craft ever launched. Voyager 1 is fast – it covers around 17 kilometres every second. Despite its incredible speed, it did not pass the last planet of the solar system until 1990.By early 2009, Voyager 1 was over ten billion miles away from the sun! Find out even more about the solar system on the BBC’s interactive pages |
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The Solar System | King’s Park Primary and Nursery School
What are the objectives of teaching solar system?
Learning Objectives –
Students will be able to describe what the Solar System is. Students will be able to describe the properties of different planets and classify them into rocky and gassy. Students will be able to name the planets in order of distance from the Sun.
What is the importance of solar system?
Solar energy – a clean source – No greenhouse gas emissions are released into the atmosphere when you use solar panels to create electricity. And because the sun provides more energy than we’ll ever need, electricity from solar power is a very important energy source in the move to clean energy production.
How do I teach my 4 year old about the solar system?
Show them the planets – The best way to start talking about space and the planets to toddlers is to show them the moon and stars in the sky at night. Take them outside on a clear night and point out the stars, and talk about how far away they are from Earth.
While they probably won’t understand the whole concept just yet, it’s a good visual and interactive way to introduce them to the idea of space and planets. There are also planetarium kits you can buy that will project constellations on to your ceiling and show kids how the planets and stars move across the sky at night.
What kids should know about the solar system?
Did you know? –
What is space for kindergarten?
What is Space? – Space, also known as outer space, is the area directly outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Space technically begins at the Kármán Line, which is about 100 km or 62 miles above the Earth. Unlike Earth, there is no air in space, which is why astronauts have to wear high-tech spacesuits to travel there. 
Why is it called solar system?
Why is it Called the Solar System? – There are many planetary systems like ours in the universe, with planets orbiting a host star. Our planetary system is called “the solar system” because we use the word “solar” to describe things related to our star, after the Latin word for Sun, “solis.” Our planetary system is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets such as Pluto; dozens of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
How our solar system works?
Our Motion Through Space Isn’t A Vortex, But Something Far More Interesting A depiction of the planets orbiting the Sun as they move through space is correct, but they don’t, ‘trail behind’ as certain non-scientific videos show. DJ Sadhu / YouTube There are a lot of moving parts to the Universe, as nothing exists in isolation.
But our true cosmic address, and our real cosmic motion, is far more complex and interesting than a mere model such as this. Which is fascinating, because it’s all governed by one simple law: General Relativity. On the largest scales, it’s only gravity that determines the motion of everything, including us, as we move through the Universe.
The planets orbit the Sun, roughly in the same plane. The Solar System moves through the galaxy with about a 60° angle between the galactic plane and the planetary orbital plane. The Sun appears to move up-and-down and in-and-out with respect to the rest of the galaxy as it revolves around the Milky Way.
And those things are true. But none of them are true the way they’re shown in the video. And that’s the important difference between qualitative and quantitative. On the largest scales, it isn’t just the Earth and the Sun that move, but the entire galaxy and,
Here we are, on planet Earth, which spins on its axis and revolves around the Sun, which orbits in an ellipse around the center of the Milky Way, which is being pulled towards Andromeda within our local group, which is being pushed around inside our cosmic supercluster, Laniakea, by galactic groups, clusters, and cosmic voids, which itself lies amidst the large-scale structure of the Universe.
After decades of research, science has finally put together the complete picture, and can quantify exactly how fast we’re moving through space, on every scale. Within the Solar System, Earth’s rotation plays an important role in causing the equator to bulge,, in creating night-and-day, and in helping power our magnetic field that protects us from cosmic rays and the solar wind.
Steele Hill / NASA The planets both rotate on their axis and revolve around the Sun. Even though you perceive yourself as stationary, we know — at a cosmic level — that simply isn’t true. As the Earth rotates on its axis, it hurtles us through space at nearly 1700 km/hr for someone on the equator.
That might sound like a big number, but relative to the other contributions to our motion through the Universe, it’s barely a blip on the cosmic radar. That’s not really all that fast, if we switch to thinking about it in terms of kilometers per second instead. The Earth spinning on its axis gives us a speed of just 0.5 km/s, or less than 0.001% the speed of light.
But there are other motions that matter more. The speed at which planets revolve around the Sun far exceeds the rotation speeds of any of them,, even for the fastest ones like Jupiter and Saturn. NASA / JPL Much like all the planets in our Solar System, Earth orbits the Sun at a much speedier clip than its rotational speed.
In order to keep us in our stable orbit where we are, we need to move at right around 30 km/s. The inner planets — Mercury and Venus — move faster, while the outer worlds like Mars (and beyond) move slower than this. The difference is severe: Mercury makes about 4 orbits for every 1 of Earth’s, and it takes Neptune over 160 Earth orbits before it’s completed even one revolution.
Moreover, as the planets orbit in the plane of the solar system, they change their direction-of-motion continuously, with Earth returning to its starting point after 365 days. Well, almost to its same exact starting point. An accurate model of how the planets orbit the Sun, which then moves through the galaxy in a,
Different direction-of-motion. Note that the planets are all in the same plane, and are not dragging behind the Sun or forming a wake of any type. Rhys Taylor Because even the Sun itself isn’t stationary. Our Milky Way galaxy is huge, massive, and most importantly, is in motion. All the stars, planets, gas clouds, dust grains, black holes, dark matter and more move around inside of it, contributing to and affected by its net gravity.
From our vantage point, some 25,000 light years from the galactic center, the Sun speeds around in an ellipse, making a complete revolution once every 220–250 million years or so. It’s estimated that our Sun’s speed is around 200–220 km/s along this journey, which is quite a large number compared both Earth’s rotation speed and its speed-of-revolution around the Sun, which are both inclined at an angle to the Sun’s plane-of-motion around the galaxy.
Science Minus Details / http://www.scienceminusdetails.com/ But the galaxy itself isn’t stationary, but rather moves due to the gravitational attraction of all the overdense matter clumps and, equally, due to the lack of gravitational attraction from all of the underdense regions.
The largest galaxy in the Local Group, Andromeda, appears small and insignificant next to the Milky, Way, but that’s because of its distance: some 2.5 million light years away. It is moving towards our Sun, at the present moment, at around 300 km/s.
ScienceTV on YouTube / Screenshot The Local Group, as massive as it is, isn’t completely isolated. The other galaxies and clusters of galaxies in our vicinity all pull on us, and even the more distant clumps of matter exert a gravitational force. Based on what we can see, measure, and calculate, these structures appear to cause an additional motion of approximately 300 km/s, but in a somewhat different direction than all the other motions, put together.
And that explains part, but not all, of the large-scale motion through the Universe. There’s also one more important effect at play, one that was quantified only recently: the gravitational repulsion of cosmic voids. The various galaxies of the Virgo Supercluster, grouped and clustered together.
On the largest, scales, the Universe is uniform, but as you look to galaxy or cluster scales, overdense and underdense regions dominate. Andrew Z. Colvin, via Wikimedia Commons For every atom or particle of matter in the Universe that clusters together in an overdense region, there’s a region of once-average density that’s lost the equivalent amount of mass.
Just as a region that’s more dense than average will preferentially attract you, a region that’s less dense than average will attract you with a below-average amount of force. If you get a large region of space with less matter than average in it, that lack-of-attraction effectively, just as extra attraction behaves as an attractive one.
In our Universe, opposite to the location of our greatest nearby overdensities, is a great underdense void. Since we’re in between these two regions, the attractive and repulsive forces add up, with each one contributing approximately 300 km/s and the total approaching 600 km/s. The gravitational attraction (blue) of overdense regions and the relative repulsion (red) of the,
underdense regions, as they act on the Milky Way. Yehuda Hoffman, Daniel Pomarède, R. Brent Tully, and Hélène Courtois, Nature Astronomy 1, 0036 (2017) When you add all of these motions together: the Earth spinning, the Earth revolving around the Sun, the Sun moving around the galaxy, the Milky Way headed towards Andromeda, and the local group being attracted to the overdense regions and repulsed by the underdense ones, we can get a number for how fast we’re actually moving through the Universe at any given instant.
We find that the total motion comes out to 368 km/s in a particular direction, plus or minus about 30 km/s, depending on what time of year it is and which direction the Earth is moving. This is confirmed by measurements of the cosmic microwave background, which appears preferentially hotter in the direction we’re moving, and preferentially colder in the direction opposite to our motion.
The leftover glow from the Big Bang is 3.36 millikelvin hotter in one (the red) direction than, average, and 3.36 millikelvin cooler in (the blue) the other than average. This is due to the total motion of everything through space. Delabrouille, J. et al.Astron.Astrophys.553 (2013) A96 If we ignore the Earth’s rotation and revolution around the Sun, we find that our Solar System is moving relative to the CMB at 368 ± 2 km/s.
The relative attractive and repulsive effects of overdense and underdense regions on the Milky Way. The combined effect is known as the Dipole Repeller. Yehuda Hoffman, Daniel Pomarède, R. Brent Tully, and Hélène Courtois, Nature Astronomy 1, 0036 (2017) We know exactly how the Earth moves through the Universe, and it’s both beautiful and simple.
The other cosmic motions all contribute, too: the Milky Way within the Local Group, the Local Group in our Supercluster, and all of it with respect to the rest-frame of the Universe. The Solar System isn’t a vortex, but rather the sum of all our great cosmic motions.
What are the objectives of teaching solar system?
Learning Objectives –
Students will be able to describe what the Solar System is. Students will be able to describe the properties of different planets and classify them into rocky and gassy. Students will be able to name the planets in order of distance from the Sun.
How do I teach my 2 year old about the planets?
Show them the planets – The best way to start talking about space and the planets to toddlers is to show them the moon and stars in the sky at night. Take them outside on a clear night and point out the stars, and talk about how far away they are from Earth.
There are many websites such as EarthSky, which give daily information about what planets are visible. For a better look buy a telescope and look at the sky from an upstairs window. Ask the kids to find different stars, such as the brightest or the smallest. If you’re in the city or can’t get a good view of the night sky, you could also take your toddler to a planetarium.
While they probably won’t understand the whole concept just yet, it’s a good visual and interactive way to introduce them to the idea of space and planets. There are also planetarium kits you can buy that will project constellations on to your ceiling and show kids how the planets and stars move across the sky at night.
