Learning About Astronomy - the Planets

Our final astronomy topic was the planets. We started by reading these books about the planets which are great for children. Each book covers two planets.

Then we made posters with all the planets on. This was a lot of fun. The children were given a long, thin piece of black paper and circles of white paper of different sizes. They then used poster paints to paint each planet. They looked at pictures of the planets to help them do this.

As they painted, we talked about the different features of each planet. What colours were they? Were they made of gas or rock? Did they have any moons or rings?

Once the planets were dry, the children stuck them on the black paper in the correct order and put name labels on them. They also drew some stars around the planets and rings around the planets that have rings.

This was a really fun activity and produced lovely results that will look great displayed on the wall.

Check out our other astronomy topics. We have learnt about the Earth, the stars and the Moon.