Hip Homeschool Hop: Solar System

The Hip Homeschool Hop is hosted by The Homeschool Chick.

My entry for this week is all about the Solar System. Claire is very interested in space and wanted that as the theme for her birthday party this last weekend. She wanted to "visit" every planet. So we "visited" each planet and played a game there. I thought this would make a really fun homeschool lesson too so I'm going to share what we did.

I made sugar cookies and decorated them to look like planets and stars. I also made a sun cake. The cookies would be a fun treat to do for a homeschool project. We always like assignments that taste yummy!

We had thunderstorms that afternoon so we had to move the party indoors and tweek a few of the games. I'm going to share the original plan here because I think it's the best. I took pictures of each, but I don't like to post pictures of other people's kids on the internet without their permission so sorry there aren't pictures to go along with each.

Earth-Moon Rock Relay:
The plan was to start on Earth and then go to the moon. There we were going to collect "moon rocks". I made the moon rocks out of crumpled up newspaper wrapped in duct tape. The kids used kitchen tongs as space tools to grab a rock and put it in a bucket. We did this in 2 teams. The team to get all their moon rocks in the bucket first wins.

Pluto- Ice relay:
(this is the game we didn't get to do inside)
The plan was to do the ol' egg & spoon relay race, but instead of using eggs we were going to use ice cubes. The spoons were to be the space tools they transported the Pluto ice with.

Neptune- Rocket launch:
I bought those foam rockets from oriental trading and the kids had a rocket race with them. The one whose rocket went the furthest won. You can pick these rockets up almost anywhere, but I found some valentine ones on clearance at oriental trading so I got those and just left the Valentine decorations off. These are the ones we used: http://www.orientaltrading.com/ui/browse/processRequest.do?demandPrefix=12&sku=48/6087&mode=Searching&erec=0&D=foam+rockets&Ntx=mode%2bmatchallpartial&Ntk=all&requestURI=processProductsCatalog&N=0&y=19&Ntt=foam+rockets&Dx=mode%2bmatchallpartial&x=10&sd=Cherub+Flinger+Flyer+Craft+Kit
You could also make your own.


Uranus- Side orbiting race
Since Uranus sometimes orbits on its side I put a small amount of water in regular balloons and blew them up. This makes them roll on their side. The kids then had to push them around an orange cone (the sun). This makes a good race for 2 teams.

Saturn-Ring toss
The kids were again in 2 teams and had to get "Saturn's ring" on the stick. Then, run back and give it to the next one on their team.

Jupiter-Asteroid belt

The kids each got a balloon (asteroid) and had to keep it up in the air (so it wouldn't hit Jupiter). As their balloons hit the ground they were "out". The last child left with a balloon that didn't hit the ground won.

Mars-Play doh martians

I gave the kids play doh and they all created their own Martians.

Earth- We ate cake. (because Earth is the only planet with cake!)

Venus-Hunt through the clouds:

I put party favors in a rubber maid container and covered them with poly fil stuffing for pillows. They had to hunt through the clouds of venus to find the favors.

Mercury-Hot planet:

Since Mercury is closest to the sun it was the "hot Planet". We used a big bouncy ball that looked like a planet and played hot potato with it.

Sun:

I made a pinata that looked like the sun. Since we were indoors they kicked it open!

Good space themed candy to fill it with would be Milky Way and Mars bars (we couldn't do these because Claire has a peanut allergy), and starbursts.

Have any good homeschooling ideas? Join the hop today and share!