Make a solar system in a box
What you need:
- Cardboard box (old cereal or shoe box)
- Coloured paints
- Paintbrush
- Balls (polystyrene)
- Playdough
- 11 straws or sticks
- Printed pictures of Bingo and Floppy
- Tape
Note: Make sure you have a grown up with you to help with scissors and small pieces
How to make your solar system in a box:
Space:
- Paint the inside of your box with black paint
- Once dry, paint dots all over the inside for stars
The planets:
- One-by-one stick the polystyrene balls on a stick and paint your planets (the stick helps you paint all sides)
- Paint the Sun yellow
- Paint Mercury brown
- Paint Venus a pale yellow
- Paint Earth blue and green
- Pain Mars a red, orange
- Paint Jupiter with red, orange, and white paint, swirled into patterns
- Paint Saturn a pale yellow
- Paint Uranus a pale blue
- Paint Neptune blue
Build your box:
- Make a ring out of yellow playdough for Saturn
- Use a stick with blunt edges and poke it through the polystyrene ball so the edges poke out of each side (balance your playdough ring on Saturn)
- Arrange your planets and get ready to hang them in your box
- For the planets, poke the sticks through the back of the box and push the planets onto the sticks from the front (this will hold them in place, so you can rotate them)
- Cut two thin lines in the top of the box (ask an adult) so you can fit a stick through it and move it from side-to-side
- Poke the two remaining sticks through the top of the box
- Attach Bingo and Floppy to these sticks using tape
- Move the sticks from side-to-side, Bingo and Floppy can now float!
Take Bingo and Floppy on an adventure through space!