After one of the children came into school recently very excited about the planets & telling us all about them, we decided to spend this week examining our solar system! We will start by asking the children why they think the sun is so important to us, & from there discuss the fact that it is a star & our earth is one of the planets which orbit it. Later in the week we will be examining the different planets in our solar system – only 8 of us now that poor Pluto has been demoted! – and learning some facts about them. We will be asking what the children think would happen if we had no sun, & doing some related drama activities. No doubt there will be some talk of aliens at some stage too!!

The Family of the Sun (tune: The Farmer in the Dell)

The family of the Sun, the family of the Sun,
There are 8 planets in the family of the Sun.

Mercury is hot, & Mercury is small,
Mercury has no atmosphere, it’s just a rocky ball.

Venus has thick clouds, that hide what is below,
The air is foul, the ground is hot, it rotates very “slow”.

We love the Earth, our home, its oceans and its trees.
We eat its food, we breathe its air, so no pollution please.

Mars is very red, it’s also dry and cold.
Some day you might visit Mars if you are really bold (we love this verse, the children think it’s hilarious!)

Great Jupiter is big, we’ve studied it a lot.
We found that it has many moons and a big red spot.

Saturn has great rings, we wondered what they were.
Now we know they’re rocks and ice, which we saw as a blur.

With atmosphers that swirl, & wispy white clouds too.
Neptune and Uranus are so cold that you’d turn blue

Pluto’s small and cold, it has an icy face.
We call it a dwarf planet now, but it’s still quite a place!