Cover your home refrigerators with mobile planets by making solar system magnets. Search the Internet with your child, and find select pictures of each of the planets. Print the pictures onto sheets of cardstock. Help your child cut around the planets. You can either repurpose old magnets and tape or glue them onto the cut planets, or purchase self-stick magnetic tape to attach to the planets. Scatter the planets around your refrigerator, creating a solar system on your refrigerator. Encourage your child to organize the planets in the proper order or move them about the refrigerator regularly.
Make a mobile to hang in your child's bedroom. Use a protractor to create circles. Make two circles of each size. Allow your child to decorate the circles to resemble the planets. You can provide your child with pictures of each planet to enable her to design her planets to look like the real heavenly bodies. Use two wire hangers to create your mobile frame. Place one hanger inside the other, making an X-frame. Hang the planets from the frame with clear fishing twine or yarn. Place the mobile in your child's room, allowing the planets to circulate above her bed or in a corner of the room.
Trade the regular, mass-produced calendar for a handmade solar system one. Work with your child to create separate pictures of each of the nine planets, the sun, the moon and the Milky Way galaxy. In the corner of each picture, place facts about the featured heavenly body. Print off monthly calendar pages from a word processing program or the Internet. Organize your calendar pages so that one picture page lies at the top of each month's sheet, alternating the pages. Visit your local copy supply store, and have it spiral bound so that it looks like a professionally produced calendar. Hang your handmade calendar on the wall, using it as a tool to keep your family organized.
Crafty parents can work with their children to create a solar system quilt. Take your child to the fabric store and allow him to pick out an array of colored fabrics as well as a dark black or blue to act as the solar system backdrop. Trace circles, relative to the planets' sizes, on these fabrics to create planet appliques. Pin the fabric planets in order on the backing fabric and sew them into place. Place another sheet of fabric underneath your solar system backdrop sheet and sandwich a sheet of batting between the two sheets. Allow your child to assist you as you hand or machine quilt the blanket. Use the blanket as a bedspread or a cozy cover to use on a cold night.