Fun to Make Yarn Solar System Project

We made a yarn solar system project to kick off our solar system unit. This is a simple, fun to make science projects kids will love!

Yarn Solar System Project - SUPER fun, easy to make solar system model for kids science projects or a study of planets.

Making your own Solar System is the best way to kick off a solar system unit. Kids will learn:

Names of the Planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune

Order of the planets

Where & what the asteroid belt is

Planets orbit the sun

Moons / Dwarf Planets

Solar System Project for Kids

To make this fun, simple to make solar system project you will want to download the free planets mini book and get the following yarn:

Mercury – light grey

Venus - medium orange

Earth - llight blue / light green

Mars – mauve

Jupiter - dark orange, brown, and white/cream

Saturn - sunflower yellow and light orange

Uranus - cobalt blue and light blue or cream

Neptune - royal blue

Hint: For planets with more than one color you will wrap the yarn at the same time.

Now, one by one you will wrap the yarn loosely around books of various sizes. The kids loved this part! Here is what we used:

Mini baby board books for: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars

Large Atlas for: Jupiter and Saturn

Chapter Book (like magic tree house size) for Uranus and Neptune

Once you have about 1” in girth for the smaller planets and 1-2” thickness for the larger planets, carefully slide the yarn off the book.

Note: It goes quickly, but you will use lots of yarn for the larger planets.

Twist a rubberband around the middle of the yarn several times to create 2 loops. This part should be done by upper elementary or a parent to not undo all the winding you’ve already finished.

Using scissors cut the center of both loops to create a large pom pom planet.

Continue until you’ve made all the 8 inner and outer planets. We also made the asteroid belt out of squished up black/grey construction paper. We choose not to do Pluto which has now been classified as one of the dwarf planets.

For Saturn, we added some construction paper cut into an oval with the center cut out and slid it over the planet.

We hung the planets from our ceiling. It was fun for the kids to practice figuring out which one was which and look at them to learn their names and positions in the universe.

Hint: You will want to use a thumbtack to hang the larger, heavier, outer planets.