Felt Solar System

Like the moon landing but possibly without the extraordinary hype, the Curiosity has ignited the imagination of children and adults around the world.  We are lucky to live close to one of the three global NASA satellite sites and control stations, I had the opportunity to work for them and on my last day walk across a massive satellite dish, climb a rickety viewing tower and see the underbelly of the dishes.  Whilst there I met some great people who's passion and excitement for science and the exponential progress of humanity was still strong on their day of retirement and the message this one particular person left me with of the wonders that he knew I and my children would experience in our lifetimes will always be with me.  Back to space, along side the internet, the wild west of modern times, the human brain and DNA, the last frontier of discovery.

I am not sure which came first the Solar system booklet at school or the fuss and buzz at home about the Curiosity landing on the seventh of August this year.  When my little Mr started showing lots of enthusiasm for space we thought we would encourage it as much as possible, astronomy and geography were always destined to be topics covered in excess as the desire for my children to be more than the sum of their parts (parents) drives me to give them a depth of knowledge in areas that I am still lacking in.  So that is where the following craft project began.  A cute and tactile introduction to astronomy and our solar system.

It's all pretty easy stuff, and all of the sizing and colouring was gathered from the NASA site or the Britannica Kids Solar System App.  By sizing I mean this one should be bigger than that one, that ones about the same size as the other one, this one needs to be the biggest and these are comparatively small.  The next thing I would like to do is get a nice big piece of dark blue or black felt and draw the nine (the threat of planet coke hasn't made us give up on you Pluto) orbits of the planets in our solar system with the children.  This is why I ended up making a felt Sun rather than just the fabric one that is on what became the carry bag for our felt solar system.  I turned what was the background of the solar system into a handy bag with some space print fabric and a long jacket zipper.

  
Felt, wadding, cotton thread, dark blue fabric, patterned fabric and a long jacket zipper.

Blanket stitch tutorial at Stitch School.

Britannica Kids Solar System App rates a five out of five in my house.  We try not to have much on the IPhone but this App, the Animal Drop game for little Miss Two and some episodes of Curious George are the occasional life savers we need when in a jam.

Inspiration:
Beautiful Felt Solar System
Montessori Print Shop
Solar System Banner

Other great felt stuff from Jane Talbot.
Felt Continents Project.