Build your own solar system with papier mache balloons - but use coloured paper for the final layer, get the kids to look at the size of their planet and work in teams (higher ability can manage a bigger planet!) they look super suspended from the ceiling once done and the students then research their planet and tell the class about it.

Build your own solar system with papier mache balloons - but use coloured paper for the final layer, get the kids to look at the size of their planet and work in teams (higher ability can manage a bigger planet!) they look super suspended from the ceiling once done and the students then research their planet and tell the class about it.

Also on a recent planet science mailing was making biscuits! now this depends if your a good cook! our lessons aren't long enough to make the biccies but they sure can ice them! different colours of icing, sweets and silver balls etc each team must produce a full solar system following the guidelines you give them - ie a description that they can match to the sweets - like mars is a red rocky planet.... go figure! do it properly and they get to eat the solar system after the lesson - they love this one, almost as much as being upto their elbows in paste.

Also the eclipses, cut out some different sized circles, get students to decorate them and name that planet - doesn't have to be a proper one 9they get very inventive), then take the largest circle and pin it to the wall, that represents this solar systems sun. Each pupil then walks backwards from the sun in a straight line holding their planet up with one eye shut, when their planet eclipses the sun they stop and their partner measures how far away they were, get another student writing the figures on the board and then a nice bit of numeracy drawing graphs and interpreting data. Just gets them thinking about sizes and dark and light too.

i tried out an idea to make our standard year 9 presentations on planets a little different; they were travel agents who were to sell me a holiday on their planet, with activities based around the science of the planet, and using visual props. not quite as inventive as some of the activities that you have been coming up with (i tried the popcorn/radioactivity one, to great effect!) but a variation on a tried-and-tested theme that worked really well. and i now have 2 trips to Pluto to book.

Teaching space...3 m of black paper and the kids have one lesson to draw the solar system to scale using the diameters I give them: They use chalk and I have had some stunning results!! Planet Diameter Distance from sun Mercury 0.6cm 3cm Venus 1.5cm 5.5cm Earth 1.5cm 7.5cm Mars 0.85cm 11.5cm Jupiter 17.8cm 39cm Saturn 15.0cm 71cm Uranus 6.4cm 143cm Neptune 6.0cm 225cm Pluto 0.3cm 295cm

I took my year 8 class out this afternoon to do a walk of a scale model of the solar system. If you scale the distances from the Sun and planetary diameters by the same factor it makes for an interesting tour. I made the Sun-Pluto distance 1.5km, which gives a solar diameter of about 17cm. Jupiter and Saturn come out to be about the size of marbles. Neptune and Uranus are also reasonable sizes. The other planets are tiny. We stopped at each planet's location and "volunteers" gave a short talk about the planet from a preprepared sheet. A nice walk in the sunshine for some. An insight into the enormous size of the solar system for most, I hope.