Often the lines of art and science intersect, and it’s at that intersection that many beautiful and wonderful things are possible.
One afternoon, my son, Vincent, and I were reading a book on the solar system when it occurred to me that he would probably learn more about the solar system if we threw ourselves into it, rather than just read from a book. Looking through our art desk pile, I found a nice selection of bookbinding paper scraps, tissue paper and some large black construction paper. Add some glue and we were ready to begin. We would create a construction paper model of our solar system.
To make our project more interesting, we started with some more research. He did have some questions, after all. What color is Mercury? How big is Jupiter? The Web site Kids’ Astronomy is a great place to start. The start page features an animated graphic of what the solar system looks like, with each planet in its orbit. It also features information on each planet (including Pluto. YES!) and gives children all the fun facts that seem to fascinate them like how long the planet takes to orbit the sun, where its name comes from, and what it looks like.
I also love the NASA page Welcome to the Planets which features gorgeous photos of each planet. One can easily spend all day looking at the breathtaking photographs there.
We wrote down which planet was the largest, which was the smallest, what colors each one was. The research and investigation is almost as fun as the art part itself.
Once our research was done, we began putting our solar system together. To begin, get two sheets of 11" x 18" black construction paper and taped them together. If you don’t have black, blue will work also. If you don’t have blue, use whatever you like. It is your creation, after all.
Next, draw in your sun and an ring for each planet’s orbit. Once you have that done, you can begin creating your sun. Using yellow and orange tissue paper, have your child glue small crumpled up wads of the tissue onto the sun. The created effect will be a blazing, colorful sun.
After the sun was finished, I then had Vincent pick which paper to use for each planet. Based on our research, he picked out the colors he thought were best suited. He was excited to find we had an orange marbled paper which he declared, "...looks like Jupiter!"
We were done in about an hour or so, but the entire time he was busy recalling facts from the information we had read online and in the books. "Venus has volcanoes. Did you know that?" and "Jupiter is the biggest planet!"
Our afternoon of reading a book ended with an impromptu fun, entertaining and informative craft. If your child isn’t interested in the planets, what about dinosaurs, plants or robots? Any subject of interest can easily be transformed into a simple cut and paste project.
By combining some cutting and gluing, and a nice dose of research a simple arts & craft project became so much more. And the best kind of learning is the learning that comes via an entertaining way. Have fun!
