Painted Solar System

Bubble is fascinated with planets and has been for quite awhile. I had grand plans of us making a 3D solar system to hang in her room, but our days are only getting busier and I just know we're never going to find the time. Instead we've spent the last few days creating a 2D painted version for the girls wardrobe doors and I'm really impressed with the results!
The solar system addition has already inspired the building of a rocket made from kitchen chairs and some astronaut moon walking - I think it's a hit ;-)

WE USED:

* paper
* paint
(various colours for each planet)
* brushes
* laminator/contact
* scissors
* hole punch
* large paper clips
* wall hooks
(we used tiny removable ones)
* whiteboard marker
* pencils and crayons

We used a solar system picture printed from the net as a colour guide for each of our planets. I had premixed different paints in separate mixing bowls ready for Bubble to use so she just had to choose her colours.

The planets we just cut from plain paper.

We went slowly over a few days and examined each planet, looking at the patterns, colours and size. Once they were all dry I ran them through a laminator so they would wear well and sit flat when hung up.

To make the sun we all coloured a piece of paper with yellow and orange crayons and cut a semi circle shape. I then put up our hooks in a row at the right height for each planet to be hung.

Bubble had a lot of fun hanging her planets in the right order.

To make them able to be hung up I used a hole punch to make a hole in the top of each one, inserted a large paperclip and twisted it to create a hook.

Our very pretty painted solar system.

One by one we went along the row naming each planet and I wrote the names above each with a whiteboard marker. If you are hanging your planets on the wall you could just create small name tags instead.