Paint and Play Dough Planets
If you’re looking for a FREE and fun Solar System activity for classroom or home, I’ve got a treat for you!
This printable .pdf download features each of the planets of our Solar System including the dwarf planet Pluto. I’ve got a nostalgic affection for Pluto so we’re keeping him.
They are multi-use because you’re busy and printer ink is expensive. I recommend printing to card stock if you will be using these multiple times or if your paint of choice is watercolor.
How to Use Paint and Play Dough Planets
Activity 1: Play Dough
Print out pages and place inside plastic sheets or page protectors. I like these from Amazon (affiliate) because they come in a pack of 100 and I don’t have to go anywhere to get them, but you could get something similar from Target or wherever. Bonus: these are great for keeping multi-use activity pages organized in your classroom binder. You could also use these guys (affiliate). We use them to hang up our artwork in our homeschool classroom without having to punch holes. They’re more expensive but you get a grommet.
Give covered pages to kiddos along with play dough of your choice. We use this (affiliate). Don’t freak too much about the mixing of colors. You can use this recipe to make your own dough if ruining store-bought brands makes your hair curl. We tend to treat play doughs as an expendable. Thus, the giant pack linked earlier.
This activity is great for kinesthetic learners. Anytime students are allowed to manipulate a material it creates connections between the content and the action. Same reason writing down a reminder makes it stick in your brain better than just telling yourself to remember. There’s a mind-body connection at work.
Use different planets on different days as you continue your planet studies or use in a classroom setting with students working on different planets. This is also a great opportunity for students to work in groups. They can then compare their work, allowing for some great discussion on subjectivity and perspective in art.
Activity 2: Painting
Break out the washable paints! To paint their own planets make sure the students have sheets not incased in plastic. This will be a one-time situation, or something you must let dry before putting back in your protective sheets. For this activity, students have a picture guide on the page and may create their art from there.
Again this is about a learning experience. The pages have the name of the planet, a picture, and an opportunity for your student to create their own version based off of that guide. You can classify this activity as “just an art project”, but busy little hands and minds will retain more when they are allowed to learn using all five senses.
While I love a good set of washable paints (affiliate), I prefer using watercolor with my own kiddos. It allows for easy color-mixing and that is a HUGLY important concept in science as they get older. These are the watercolors we use, again-and-again (affiliate)! That link is from Micheals and they do ship, but this is also another good brand (affiliate) we’ve used that you can get on Amazon and this set comes with brushes.
Note: The paints pictured above are for the baby. He doesn’t get nice paints, yet. LOL.
Bonus Activity: Dry Erase
Keep out your plastic sheet protectors (affiliate). Place your printed pages inside and grab your dry erase markers (affiliate). Now your students can color all over the pdfs again and again.
I hope this gave you some fun Solar System study ideas for your home or school classroom! Get the FREE 10-page .pdf download below.
