Our Amazing Journey Through the Solar System! 🌞🪐

What an exciting time you have had exploring our amazing Solar System! You have been discovering all about the Sun and the eight planets, learning some very special facts and becoming quite the little space expert! 🚀

Marianne challenged you to see if you could spot Venus in the evening sky. You discovered that Venus is often the first and brightest planet to appear

after dusk, making it a very special planet to look out for. You were fascinated to learn that Venus has a very unusual orbit too! When we created our own Solar System on the mat, Marianne drew a big Sun in the centre and

eight chalk circles around it. You each became a planet and moved around the Sun, pretending to orbit. You quickly noticed that while everyone else was orbiting one way (anticlockwise), Venus was orbiting the other way, clockwise! 

A very big thank you to Darina for sharing her amazing, huge, real telescope with us!  You all had a turn looking through the lens, pretending to spot🔭 distant stars, planets, and the Moon. It was wonderful to see your excitement and curiosity as you explored the telescope and imagined what you might discover in the night sky.

You have also been learning so many fascinating features about each planet. We practised our cool planet poem, using words and descriptions to help us remember the order and special characteristics of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. You are becoming more confident

at naming the planets and sharing facts with your friends!

Marianne demonstrated how the four planets closest to the Sun — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — are rocky planets. Then you discovered that the outer planets are giants made mostly of gases and other materials. We put our learning into action with an exciting experiment! We used rocks to represent the rocky planets and balloons filled with CO₂gas (Marianne blew them up) to represent the gas giants. We placed them into the water trough and watched carefully. The rocky planets

sank, while the gas-filled balloons floated! You made predictions, watched closely, and talked about what you could see happening.

Another favourite experiment was making our very own “Supersonic Slush!” 🧊✨ You helped create this special slushy mixture using smashed ice, sparkling glitter stars, and beautiful blue and yellow dye. We learned that this icy, slushy material is used to represent the amazing conditions found on Uranus and Neptune. You took turns stirring the Supersonic Slush

at mat time and later continued the investigation outdoors with Genna. There were lots of smiles and giggles as you practised saying the fun words, “Supersonic Slush!”

Throughout this project, you have shown such wonderful curiosity, imagination, confidence and enthusiasm for learning. You have been asking questions, sharing your ideas, remembering new information, experimenting with materials, moving your bodies to represent planets, and working together to build our understanding of space.

This learning reflects Te Whāriki | Mana Atua – Wellbeing, as you confidently participated in new experiences and explored your environment; Mana Tangata – Contribution, as you shared ideas, took

turns, and learned alongside your friends; and Mana Aotūroa – Exploration, as you investigated the natural and physical world, made predictions, experimented, and developed working theories about our Solar System.

You have certainly become a wonderful group of little astronomers! 🌎🌙⭐

It has been SO much fun exploring the Solar System together!

And now… next week we are off to the MOON! 🌙🚀 I wonder what amazing discoveries will be waiting for you there?

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