Solar System Mobile

As I was tucking my sweet, sunny kid Adam into bed the other night, he asked me very innocently how does it get dark? I grabbed up my nearest ball of yarn and held it up to his light fixture and slowly turned it - explaining how the earth revolves and as it turns away from the sun it is cast into shadow, thus creating night.
I think it took him an hour to quiet down and stop asking questions! But I could tell the next morning that he had been up late into the night, pondering the mysteries of the universe - at least, the solar system!
A trip to the library the following day and a dig into Mama's craft drawer were obviously needed! Together, we made a planet mobile to hang in his room.

Materials: 10 styrofoam balls (we included Pluto) of various sizes
                  Paste
                  Paper for paper mache
                  Craft Paint
                  20 gauge galvanized steel wire (any sturdy wire will work)
                  Fishing line or string
                   Dowel rod

I rounded up some styrofoam balls of various sizes. I think I have a six inch ball for the sun, 3 four inch balls (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus), 4 three inch balls (Earth, Mercury, Venus, Neptune), 1 two inch ball (Mars), and 1 one inch ball (Pluto). I'm not sure if the sizes are all to scale with each other, I just used what I had on hand.
The kids helped recycle paper lunch sacks by ripping them to shreds. Any paper suitable for paper mache will work though.

Using a flour and water paste mixture (half a cup of flour to two cups of water, bring it to a boil and let it cool), we covered the styrofoam balls and let them dry.

I used plain old craft paint, mixed to different colors to paint the planets. I painted the trickier ones, like Earth, but the kids could easily handle the plain planets like Mars and Neptune.

For the rings around Saturn, I made a "nest" out of the galvanized steel. I then took two 3 inch pieces of the wire and bent it into a U, and pushed them into the sides of the ball, securing the rings.








I made 10 more U shapes out of the wire and inserted them into the tops of the styrofoam balls. This is what I attached the fishing line to.

I cut the dowel rod into two equal pieces (I should have used two dowel rods so the planets had more space) and notched out the center with a pair of wire snippers so that they could recces down into each other and not swivel. I used a piece of wire to bind them together.





Using fishing line, I strung the planets and the sun from the dowel rods and hung them from the ceiling.