Pluto .... the planet!

As I mentioned before, we just finished a unit on space. One of the things we talked about was of course planets! We talked about the order of the planets from the sun, how they are different, and the moons that they have. One thing that kept being brought up was how Pluto is no longer a planet. Although the kids in my class were babies when Pluto was demoted, they knew that it was once a planet and has since been removed as such. It was actually quite funny to hear them talk about it.

One of the projects we did was create our own planet. The first thing we did was cut large circles from white card stock. Each student was able to choose 2 colors and they would squeeze a small blob of each color on their circle.

You place the circle into a 1 gallon ziplock bag and press the air out. The next thing to do is let them squish! 

As they squish the paint around, it marbleizes and makes a swirled look. It was fun to see how it swirled together and what designs would come from it. The more they squished, the more character it formed. 

After they have squished as much as they wanted, we cut down the side seams and peeled the plastic off. After drying we hung them up on our space bulletin board. A lot of the students wanted to name their planets Pluto so that he didn't feel left out.