A fruit bowl Solar System
Once, on a school visit, I found children in a reception class arguing about the order of the planets from the Sun and decided to help them with the aid of some fruit. Today I constructed the same model of the Solar System with the girls.
We set out a melon to be the Sun and then began placing the planets in order from the Sun using blueberries.
These planets nearer the Sun are called rocky planets. They are made in the way the girls made their planets in the last blog. We used the blueberries to represent the four rocky planets and, as we placed them, we said their names – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
The planets further out are much larger and made mainly of gases and are known as gas giants. We modelled these with larger fruits. First, we modelled the largest of the gas giants, Jupiter, with an orange.
Saturn is the next planet. It is smaller than Jupiter but has rings around it, which I represented with a disc of cardboard.
There are two more gas giants to add. They are Uranus and Neptune, and we represented them with two plums.
Dip into the Archives
Eleven years ago, the girls’ Auntie Pippa made a fruit bowl Solar System, which you can see here:
Pippa aged 6 has been busy in the kitchen making a model of the Solar System! Next she will be trying the
Pippa, being a little older than her nieces at the time, labelled them up.
You may like to make a fruit bowl Solar System with your children, photograph it, print it off, and pin it up in a science corner.
