This is certainly an activity that I truly enjoy doing. Partly because we go outside, meaning I don’t have to spend my day working indoors and partly because the kids enjoy it so much, but mostly because the students finally begin to realize the scale and magnitude of our solar system. The littler pictures surrounding the border represent each of the planets in scale (or at least as close to scale as we can get with only 27 students. The larger picture in the middle represents our entire solar system, as it would be in scale with our playground field. Mercury sits on the very edge of the field, with close neighbors Venus, Earth and Mars. The solar system then begins to spread out further and further as you make your way past Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus, until you reach the fence at the other edge of the field, where you will find Pluto.
In the word’s of the great Anamaniac, Yakko, “It’s a great big universe and we’re all really puny.” ~ Yakko’s Universe