Solar System Art Activity

By Lesson Fanatic

This is a teacher directed art activity used as

an overview or review to a Solar System unit.
The artwork in the sample was created on
9x18 paper, but any size construction paper
will do.
Students can use crayons or oil pastels for the
drawing and coloring. The colors of the
planets were determined by the class using
various photos, but can be changed to suit
your supplies. In the examples, the
background was painted using black
watercolor paint after coloring was complete.
As the students work, the teacher will be using
the included script to tell students about each
Solar object. The teacher script is italicized.
A great resource book for this activity is
Planets Around the Sun by Seymour Simon or
Solar System by Gregory Vogt. Both books
have easy text and large photographs that
could be shown to students. Feel free to
modify the teacher script to adjust to your
particular grade level.

Introduction
Before beginning the
activity, have students
visualize how their Sun
and planets will fit on
their paper. Show
some examples of the
entire Solar System.

The Solar System is full of planets, moons,

asteroids, comets and other objects that orbit, or go
around, our Sun. The pull of the Sun is very strong
and keeps these objects circling around it. The four
planets closest to the Sun are terrestrial planets
because of their rocky, solid surfaces. These
planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The
four other large planets are called gas giants.
These are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
An asteroid belt sits between Jupiter and Mars. It is
made up of thousands of objects too small to be
considered planets.

The Sun
Draw a huge Sun on
the left side of the
paper. Start by using
yellow and then
adding other colors
once the size is
correct.
The Sun is a big star. It is an enormous ball of
gas. It started as a large cloud of dust and gas.
Eventually it began to form a center through its
own force of gravity. It became a large mass
producing its own light, heat and energy. The Sun
is the largest object in the entire Solar System.
98% of all matter found in the Solar System is
found within the Sun. Everything else combined is
the remaining 2%. This shows that the Sun is
huge. Over one million Earths could fit inside the
Sun. Since it is so large, it has a huge gravitational
pull (the larger the mass of an object, the greater
the gravitational pull). The Suns gravitational pull
keeps everything else in the Solar System orbiting
around it.

The Sun
Page two
The Sun is extremely hot. On its surface, it is
about 10,000 degrees F. There are some areas of
the Sun slightly cooler than others. These areas
are called Sun spots, but they still are extremely
hot. The scientist Galileo was the first to observe
and analyze these spots. When looking at images
of the Sun, the spots look darker in color. They
come and go over time.

Mercury
Have students draw
and color Mercury. In
this art project, it
should be about the
size of a penny. The
art example included
show it colored gray
and green.
Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun. It is
smaller than Earth, so it has less gravity. If you
weighed 70 pounds on Earth, you would weigh
only about 27 on Mercury. You couldnt weigh
yourself, though, because Mercury has a daytime
temperature of about 800 degrees F. At night it
drops to an extremely chilly -300 degrees F.
Mercury is mostly made of iron. It has a rocky
crust made as the iron core of the planet cooled
and shrank. The surface is covered with craters
caused by collisions with asteroids and comets.
Because of Mercurys small size, it cannot hold on
to an atmosphere (the gases that surround a
planet). Any gases released from the planet
escape into space. There is almost no air on it.
Mercury rotates very slowly. One day on Mercury
is almost 58.5 Earth days. However, its revolution
around the Sun is very quick at 88 Earth days.

Venus
Venus is about the
same size as Earth.
On this diagram, it
is about the size of
a quarter. Many
students colored it
pinkish brown.
Venus is about the same size as planet Earth.
Venus has a much thicker atmosphere than Earth,
making it very hard to get glimpses of its surface.
The thick clouds that cover the planet trap the
Suns heat. This makes Venus the hottest planet
in the Solar System. Its atmosphere is mostly
carbon dioxide. Venus rotates in the opposite
direction of almost all other planets. On Venus,
the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east,
which is the opposite of what happens on Earth.
Venus has no known moons. We can see Venus
in our night sky as it is very bright. Only our moon
is brighter in our night sky.

Earth
Earth is similar in
size to Venus, so
have students draw
another planet the
size of a quarter.
It is blue with
green for the
continents.

Earth is the only known planet to support life. It has

air, water and land. Its axis is tilted more than 23
degrees which allows the planet to have four
seasons. Water covers over 70% of Earths surface.
The composition of its atmosphere protects Earth
from the Suns radiation, as well as meteors. The
atmosphere is made up of nitrogen and oxygen plus
some other elements as well. It takes Earth about 24
hours to rotate on its axis once. It makes one entire
revolution around the Sun in about 365 days.

Mars
Have the
students draw a
small red planet
next to Earth. On
the drawing, it
could be about
the size of a
dime.
Mars is known as the red planet. This is because
its surface is a red, dusty dirt made of iron oxide. It
has higher mountains and deeper canyons than any
other planet. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on
Mars, is thought to be the largest volcano in the
entire Solar System. It is three times larger than
Mount Everest. There is some evidence that there
was once water on the planet. Mars has a very thin
atmosphere composed of mostly carbon dioxide. It
has two small moons.

Jupiter
Jupiter is a large
planet that can be
drawn about the size
of a small rubber
ball. It is a colorful
planet so students
used pink, peach, and
yellows to create it.
Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. In fact,
it is larger than all the other planets combined. It is a
stormy planet with different cloud formations and storms
creating a very colorful planet. The Great Red Spot is a
giant storm on Jupiter that has been raging for almost
300 years. The storm is bigger than the planet Earth.
Jupiter does not have a solid surface. It is a gas planet;
a large ocean of liquid hydrogen. It has 50 moons, 4 of
which were discovered by Galileo. It is the third
brightest object in the night sky after the moon and
Venus.
The remaining planets, the gas giants are
farther away and should be separated from the
planets already drawn. In reality, however,
there is not enough room on the paper.

Saturn
Saturn should be drawn
slightly smaller than
Jupiter. It has rings
around it, which can be
drawn by taking the paper,
turning it sideways, and
drawing a skinny C around
the planet. We used a
yellow, peach, orange
combination of colors.

Saturn is the second largest planet. It is also a gas

planet made mostly of hydrogen and helium. It has
rings made mostly of ice chunks, rock and dust.
Saturn is the only planet in the Solar System that is
less dense than water. This means that Saturn
could float if there was a body of water big enough
to hold it. Saturn has dozens of moons.

Uranus
Uranus is extremely
far away from the
Sun, giving the
appearance that it is
a small green, blue
object. For this art
project, it is drawn
about the size of a
nickel.

Uranus is a huge icy planet covered with clouds. Its

blue color is caused by the methane gas in its
atmosphere. It also has very thin rings that surround it.
Uranus looks like a squished ball. Its north and south
poles are in the middle of the planet, instead on the top
and bottom like other planets. That means it is lying on
its side compared to the other planets. One day on
Uranus is only 17 hours long. However, it takes Uranus
84 years to orbit the Sun one time.

Neptune
For this activity,
Neptune is drawn as a
bluish circle slightly
larger than Uranus.

Neptune cannot be seen with just our eyes. High

powered telescopes are necessary to see this gas
planet. It is an extremely cold planet with very
strong winds blowing at speeds up to 700 miles per
hour. It takes Neptune almost 165 Earth years to
complete a revolution around the Sun. Since it
was discovered in 1846, it has completed a single
revolution. Its axis is tilted 30 degrees which
means Neptune has seasons. Each season lasts
40 years.

Have students complete their drawing and

coloring and add any additional details.
Have students paint the entire picture using
black watercolor paint. The paint will not stick
to the crayon or oil pastel, but it will stick to
the paper. We mounted our finished pieces
of artwork on a colored background paper
and displayed them in our school hallway.

Thank you for

downloading this free
lesson. I hope your
class enjoys it as
much as we did.
Contact me at
lessonfanatic@gmail.com

Our Classroom Wall

Display

The following photographs are from

the NASA website. I have included
them in case you would like to show
them to your students while they are
working on their art. You could use
them as a slide show or post them
around the room. I held them up in
front of the classroom as we worked
because of the limitations of the
classroom I was using that day.

The Sun

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Neptune