This activity was suggested in the Apologia Astronomy text for 3rd - 6th graders.
We did not get around to repeating this with Scholar when he went through the book the next year.
We gathered all of the supplies (or my sister did - then all of us joined her on their space trip.
A small soccer ball became the SUN, and the kids wrote that beside their ball.
We carefully measured to Mercury, and then Venus.
The kids were awed at how tiny Venus was after such a long way.
Next stop EARTH.
And MARS.
Then something bad happened ... we ran out of church parking lot, and we were only to Mars.
So we changed directions ... and kept going down the street toward home, over 1/4 of a mile.
Here I am standing at Mars .... and way down there ....
THAT is the great Asteroid Belt.
We made a thick salt barrier to show the Asteroid Belt.
Looking back at Mars, the big kids ran and got the sun ... they couldn't find Mercury or Venus, but they did find a smushed Earth!
Next up was a rock named Jupiter ... we looked back and could barely see the kids who ran back to the Asteroid Belt.
Uranus was even harder to see when we looked back toward Saturn, but we were nearly to our property line.
We walked past both driveways ... and were right past the other property line when we finally stopped for Neptune.
From the Sun to Neptune, we had travelled over 1/4 of a mile.
We decided to push on for Pluto....
and a long time later, we reached the very, very end of the mile road - so Pluto was 3/4 of a mile from Neptune.
We managed to hike back to Neptune, and the kids were exhausted!
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