Build a Lego Solar System Science for kids

We are making our way through our summer fun list and this week I decided it was time to learn about outer space…with a LEGO solar system.

To make things a little more interesting I thought it might be more fun to pull out the Lego bin and make a Lego solar system.

We started by making the sun…after all it is the centre of our solar system. I simply gave my girls piles of different coloured lego, yellow for the sun, and they created planets. Each planet had a unique colour and shape. As they built we researched and discovered a few interesting facts about each planet.

Cool Facts About Planets in Our Solar System

Sun – the Sun is 150 million kilometres away from the Earth

Mercury – is the smallest planet in our solar system

Venus – is the closest planet to Earth and it doesn’t have any moons

Earth – is our home planet…our distance from the sun allows for different seasons to exist

Mars – the “red” planet is currently being explored by the NASA Mars rover “Curiosity”

Jupiter – has over 60 moons

Saturn – the rings around Saturn are actually made up of pieces of icy rocks

Uranus – is actually spinning on its side

Neptune – furthest from the sun, it takes 165 Earth years to orbit the Sun

Once the planets were made, we moved to the floor. We set up the solar system on the living room floor. Can you spot Earth? Can you spot our moon? Pretty cool, right?

But, why be limited by the confines of our indoor space when we could head outside to the driveway. We packed up our solar system and moved outside…check out our planetary orbit games for kids.

Informative books about space…

Eyewitness Time and Space