This is my daughter, Samira’s lapbook all about The Solar System. It’s almost complete and we shall share it with you soon insha’Allah. My son, Yusef also made his own mini lapbook about The Solar System about two years ago now. You can view it here.
The templates for Samira’s lapbook I found on the homeschool share website.
I am also making a Solar System Totbook with my younger two daughters Amina and Basma, aged 4 and 3 as well as some space arts and crafts.
Check back soon insha’Allah.
After completing our Solar System Poster I went into further detail on the Solar System with my son because he showed a lot of interest in the subject. We made a mini lapbook with lots of “Fact Flaps” where a question is written on the front of the flap and then he wrote his answer inside. This gave him a good opportunity to read and do his own research and it also helped him to practise answering with full sentences.
We used several books for reference:
Knowledge Masters: Outer Space written by Harry Ford and Kay Barnham
SPACE published by NPP Books
We also founds lots and lots of wonderful information from the Enchanted Learning Website
The first page consisted of four flaps that discussed the Solar System in general. One of the flaps had a double flap to show details of each planets orbit. To make the flaps I used MS Word. I pasted in shapes and filled them with a deep space image and then I used WordArt to write the questions on the flaps. Then I printed an A4 sheet with 4 ruled boxes for my son to write his answers in. Finally, I simply sellotaped the flaps over the top of his answer boxes.
I created this worksheet myself based on a diagram from the Outer Space book.
Next up was another set of question and answer flaps all about the Sun followed by a diagram showing the structure of the Sun.
Then my son did a page all about spacecraft flying near the sun. We did a short bit of research about the Helios 2 space probe.
Then we made some question and answer flaps with general questions about the planets of the Solar System before making fact pages dedicated to each of the planets in turn.
A page all about the planet Mercury.
Venus planet facts page.
A page dedicated to the planet Earth.
Being that we are a Muslim family, I thought this was a good opportunity to explain to my son what the Qur’an says about life on Earth.
The book is completed with a page of facts for the remaining planets.
If you would like the file to make this lapbook (The Solar System by Iman Bendjedidi) and for more details on other Space Theme projects please click here to visit the Teaching Ideas website.
Last year I covered the Solar System with my eldest son and daughter. At the time we were really into making posters for everything because they would hang them on the walls in their bedroom and it would be amazing to see how much info they retained just by seeing them day after day. My daughter, who was 5 years old at the time wasn’t massively interested in space and the planets … it tends to be a ‘boy thing’ which, at the age of 6 was most definately the case with my son.
I decided that the best way to learn the names of the planets was to have them put together a poster which would be a visual aid. My son knew most if not all of the planet names already but he didn’t know the correct order and within 2 days of this hanging on the bedroom wall he had memorised it, masha’Allah. My daughter is still not a strong reader and struggled with the names but she recognised the planets because we talked alot about them as we painted them, and she remembers the ones that she painted LOL! and with big brother helping her, she has also learned to memorise them.
I followed up this poster with a more in depth project with my son, details of which will be posted later on insha’Allah.
We used an A1 size piece of black card (which was only just big enough) and painted the edge with an orange arc to represent the sun. Then using a brush we dabbed the card with spots of PVA glue and sprinkled with silver glitter to create the effect of stars in deep space. Then my son pasted out the title with PVA glue and my daughter added on the silver glitter to spell out “The Solar System”.
Using a text book for guidance, I showed my son how to use a pair of compasses to draw perfect circles, and he drew the planets on white card according to their relative sizes. Then we had lots of fun mixing up paint colours that would be just right for each planet. The kids painted on the base colours and we left them to dry for a couple of hours before adding on finer details to make the planets look realistic (yes, I did help with that part).
When everything was dry, we glued down the planets and painted on the rings around Saturn (which I later regreted not actually drawing them and cutting them out on card first because the after effects of the painting and the shortage of space on the card meant the rings looked a bit wonky and squashed LOL!) Finally we cut out and pasted on the planet name labels.
Last year just before Ramadhan we had lovely weather, masha’Allah, so we were able to do alot of our lessons and arts and crafts in the garden … so much less hassle than trying to get paint off the carpet or the dining table!! I thought it would be nice to make a large poster showing the moon phase cycle and it has helped my son to memorise the 8 major phases and their names. Our poster is based on the cycle as seen in the Northern Hemisphere.
First of all I printed off some moon phase templates onto thin card which I then cut out ready for my son to paint them a pale grey colour. You can find the templates here. Being outside in the warm air they dried much faster too.
While waiting for the templates to dry, he got to work on colouring in the labels for each of the phases. I just used MS Word Art to create the 8 labels:
NEW MOON (not visible), WAXING CRESCENT, HALF MOON, WAXING GIBBOUS, FULL MOON, WANING GIBBOUS, HALF MOON, WANING CRESCENT.
We didn’t make a template that represents the New Moon because the poster was made using black card, and obviously, seeing as the New Moon is not visible to the naked eye it wasn’t necessary to add a template to the poster.
We used orange paint on the edge of the black sheet of card to represent the angle of the sun and then the templates were glued into their relevant positions with a title label in the middle of the diagram.
Finally the labels were added and the poster is complete … a useful diagram that serves as a refresher as Ramadhan approaches.
