Teachers incorporate the solar system project into their science curricula because the lesson has so many benefits. The project teaches scientific concepts, but also teaches mathematical concepts and provides an opportunity for creative expression. The solar system project is often memorable for students. Each student can keep his completed solar system model and refer back to it as he continues to learn about the solar system. Because the activity involves active learning, students usually retain the information long after the project has been completed.
The third grade is an excellent time for students to learn about working together in pairs or teams. The solar system project can be done as a group project, by asking each student to create just one planet. Because third-graders often have shorter attention spans and it takes them longer to research information, assigning students to teams and asking each student to focus on one planet in the solar system helps ensure that students get a more complete understanding of the solar system and creating a solar system model. The solar system project can also be done together as an entire class or it can be assigned as an individual project if you allow students the extra time they need to learn about the solar system and provide them with research materials at their reading level.
A solar system model can be created in a variety of different ways, using a variety of different materials. Allow each third grade student to explore his creativity and express himself through the solar system model by giving him the freedom to choose what materials he uses for the project. Provide your students with a list of materials that can be used as suggestions in case the student struggles with creating his own idea. For example, drawing a model with markers and crayons, creating clay planets and moons or using styrofoam balls for planets and moons are all viable options.
Third-grade students have learned about measurements and conversions, but are also still learning about these concepts. The solar system model project can be used to teach students not only about the solar system, but also about measurements and creating a model to scale. Talk to your students about how some planets are much larger than others, as well as about how much larger the sun is than the planets. Show them examples of creating images to scale and give them instructions about how to create the model in scale in order to teach measurement and conversion as part of this project.