Our Solar System

Students use the display to order the planets from the Sun, compare their sizes, and find one fact about each without opening a book.

Students will be able to:

• Name the eight planets in order from the Sun
• Compare the relative sizes of the planets
• Describe one distinguishing feature of each planet

Black and white prints as clean line art rather than a greyed-out copy of the colour version, so the class can colour it in. The preview above changes with this setting.

Pages

20

Colour pages

11

Black & white

9

Paper

• White: 20 sheets — Everything in the print pack
• Yellow: 4 sheets — Title letters
• Black: 3 sheets — Backing behind the planets

What is in the pack

• Title letters — OUR SOLAR SYSTEM — 4 sheets, black and white

  O · U · R · S · O · L · and 8 more

• Sun and eight planets — 7 sheets, colour

  Sun, tiled across two sheets · Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars on one sheet · Jupiter across two sheets · Saturn with rings across two sheets · Uranus and Neptune on one sheet

• Planet name labels — 1 sheet, black and white

  Sun · Mercury · Venus · Earth · Mars · Jupiter · and 3 more

• Planet fact cards — 2 sheets, colour

  Mercury — closest to the Sun, and a day there lasts about 59 Earth days. · Venus — the hottest planet, wrapped in thick carbon dioxide cloud. · Earth — the only planet known to have liquid water on its surface. · Mars — its rust-red soil is where the nickname the Red Planet comes from. · Jupiter — the largest planet, with a storm bigger than Earth. · Saturn — its rings are made of billions of pieces of ice and rock. · and 2 more

• Scale note and mnemonic strip — 1 sheet, black and white

  Sizes are to scale with each other. Distances are not. · My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming

• Star-field border strip — 1 sheet, colour

  Repeating star strip

• Question of the week cards — 1 sheet, black and white

  Why is Venus hotter than Mercury when Mercury is closer to the Sun? · Saturn would float in a big enough bath. What does that tell you about it? · Why does Mars look red from Earth? · If the Sun went out, how long before we noticed?

Change the title and the printable letters regenerate to match it.

1. 1

   Step 1 — Prepare the background

   Cover the board in black or very dark blue. This is the one board where a dark ground genuinely helps — everything on it is a light shape.

2. 2

   Step 2 — Add the title

   Run OUR SOLAR SYSTEM across the top in yellow letters.

3. 3

   Step 3 — Place the Sun

   Fix the Sun hard against the left edge, half off the board. It reads as much bigger that way and saves you a third of the width.

4. 4

   Step 4 — Lay out the planets before fixing any

   Put all eight in order along the board and step back. Getting the spacing right matters more than getting it even — leave a wider gap between Mars and Jupiter to hint at the asteroid belt.

5. 5

   Step 5 — Fix the planets and label them

   Staple each planet, then put its name label directly beneath it in the same position every time.

6. 6

   Step 6 — Hang the fact cards

   Pin one fact card under each name label. Keep them all at the same height so the bottom edge reads as a line.

7. 7

   Step 7 — Add the scale note and border

   Put the scale note at the bottom right — it is the honest bit, so do not hide it — and finish with the star border.