Planet Project
Are your children showing interest in space and planets? This all started with L asking questions about the earth. Every time he would go downstaires he would get very excited about being INSIDE the earth. L - I know that planet earth is round but it's accually a square. ME - No L, the earth is round. L - NO Frida, it's a square I can feel it! 
I started talking about all the planets and showing pictures of them on my phone. He became very interested in spelling them and learning their letters both writing on paper and on my phone. He was very excited to show his little brother the pictures of the planets and tell him their names and which one was the hottest, the biggest, the smallest etc. His favorite is Mercury as they think it looks like the planet is filled with fireworks.
So what you need for this project and how you do it is all on this website: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/astronomy/solarsystemmodel/
I made some changes when it came to material. I used glitterglue, diamond stickers and I colored the planets with the boys instead of buying colored paper. I used hard paper made for aquarelle colors which worked fine. Some of them got a little bent from all the glitterglue when they layd to dry but it was easily corrected once they were dry. The nightsky was originally planned to be only colored black but the diamond stars just kind of happened and it looks great!
I gave them a lot of freedom with the decorating. The only "rules" I had was that they had the right colors of the planets. I showd them the picture of the planet they chose and layd out the colors of that planet. They could do as they liked using those colors. Of course if they wanted to add a color or skip one that was ok. Rules are ment to be broken as they say but my idea was to teach them how the planets look like and also give them an introduction of matching colors. It became a part of the fun and not something that restricted their creativity which I think is very important! I was so amazed with what they came up with.
This is the resault. Isn't it just wonderful? It was so much fun and they learnt a lot. They felt very proud of their achivements and wanted to show it to everyone. I love that L gave Saturn a big smily-face and M insisted that Saturn should be only brown with gold glitterglue! It turned out to be my favorite planet as it is normally as well! L loves little mercury and the big Sun in the middle. M's favorite seems to be Mars since he is completely inlove with the color red at the moment.
