Earth & Sun

Objectives

To describe the movement of the Earth, and other planets, relative to the Sun in the solar system.

To understand the Sun, Earth and Moon as approximately spherical bodies.

Resources

Fruits and foods - one of each of various sizes eg. peppercorn, cherry tomato, raspberry, blueberry, watermelon, grapefruit, apple, lime

Today's Lesson

Main Activity

At the start of the lesson, have the fruits and peppercorn in the list below out on the table in front of your child.

Ask them what they think these might represent, in our topic of Earth and Sun.

Establish that they each represent a planet and have been carefully chosen to show how the planets compare in size to each other.

Challenge your child to work out which fruit or peppercorn represents which planet. Remind your child of the names of the planets (eight including Earth).

Then reveal the answers and discuss how amazing it is that the Earth is only the size of a raspberry compared to Jupiter being a watermelon, and that we usually think of Earth as being the ‘whole world’!

Next, download the Model of the Solar System instructions, and the Planetary Data and Planetary Data DIY resources. Making the model is quite a challenging activity, but would be a good task to set up to help your child to visualise the solar system further, and to use some mathematical calculations to help work out relative distances that the planets are from each other.

📄 CREATE - Model of the Solar System instructions

📄 READ - Planetary Data

📄 READ - Planetary Data DIY

Resources

Citations

[1] www.youtube.com