(Ok I’m still unsure about some of the referencing aspects of this site, the activities below aren’t mine and I’ve put who they’ve been developed by in as well. If I am doing it wrong can you tell me and I’ll sort it out as soon as possible. Any activities that I have developed myself I will declare as my own.)

The Earth and Beyond

I think that this is a brilliant area of science to look at but unfortunately it is one of the hardest to teach. : ( However lets focus on some of the things that we can learn and do.

The first thing we looked at was the planets. Unfortunately due to the silly people at NASA we lost a planet!!! Arhhhhh, how do you lose a planet, you say, well it wasn’t as much lost as it was demoted. (awwww, poor Pluto) I remember all my planets and the order from school in this handy little rhyme:

Many - Mercury
Vile - Venus
Earthlings - Earth
Munch - Mars
Jam - Jupiter
Sandwiches - Saturn
Under - Uranus
Newspapers – Neptune

As the solar system is so large it is difficult in getting this through to pupils. It’s really hard to show the immense size of the planets let alone the distances involved between each. Alan gave us some brilliant examples, and a good site link
http://www.noao.edu/education/work/Peppercorn/Peppercorn_Main.html

Which from these ideas come from.

A good resource that highlights the sizes of the planets compared to each other is shown below. Create cards with the planet names on each and stick one of these to it, it should show pupils the difference between each planet.


Sun - any ball, diameter 8.00 inches
Mercury - a pinhead, diameter 0.03 inch
Venus - a peppercorn, diameter 0.08 inch
Earth - a second peppercorn
Mars - a second pinhead
Jupiter - a chestnut or a pecan, diameter 0.90 inch
Saturn - a hazelnut or an acorn, diameter 0.70 inch
Uranus - a peanut or coffeebean, diameter 0.30 inch
Neptune - a second peanut or coffeebean

Then we explored how far the planets were from each other using this small scale. This activity needs a lot of space and quite a bit of counting.

When you have your large space ready (I really mean large) find a place for your sun (best to place it to one side or at the beginning of your space).

- Walk 10 paces away from the sun and place Mercury down
- Walk 9 paces away from Mercury and put Venus down
- Walk 7 paces away from Venus and put Earth down
- Walk 14 paces away from Earth and put Mars down
- Walk 95 paces from Mars and put Jupiter down
- Walk 112 paces away from Jupiter and put Saturn down
- Walk 249 paces away from Saturn and put Uranus down
- Walk 281 paces away from Uranus and put Neptune down

The "Thousand-Yard Model or, The Earth as a Peppercorn" is copyrighted 1989 by Guy Ottewell of the Astronomical Workshop.

I know it’s probably a large area but it’s perfect for demonstrating the solar system.
We then looked at the seasons and how they are created. As a class we found it a little hard to comprehend so I don’t know how well it would go in a classroom setting.

Here’s the main points that we found out:
- The Earth travels around the Sun in 365 days
- The Earth is tilted on an axis, which is why we get the different seasons
- When we (in the northern hemisphere) are tilted towards the sun, we experience summer time and at the same time those in the southern hemisphere are experiencing winter
- When we (in the northern hemisphere) are tilted away from the sun, we experience winter and at the same time those in the southern hemisphere are experiencing summer

Dates to remember:
- June 21st – Summer solstice
- December 21st – Winter solstice
- March 21st – Spring equinox
- September 21st – Autumn equinox