We made a Yarn Solar System Project to kick off our solar system unit. This is a simple, fun to make science projects kids will love!

Yarn Solar System Project - SUPER fun, easy to make solar system model for kids science projects or a study of planets.

Hands on Solar System Unit

The Sun
The Moon & Astronauts
Inner Planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars)
Outer Planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune)
Pluto, Asteroid Belt, Comets, and Stars

Yarn Solar System Project

Making your own Solar System is the best way to kick off a solar system unit. We decided to make this Yarn Solar System Project, but here are 18 creative solar system projects to pick from. No matter what project you pick, kids will learn:

Names of the Planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
Order of the planets
Where & what the asteroid belt is
Planets orbit the sun
Moons / Dwarf Planets

Supplies Needed for Yarn Solar System Project

To make this fun, simple to make solar system project you will want to download the free planets mini book and get the following yarn:

Mercury – light grey
Venus – medium orange
Earth – llight blue / light green
Mars – mauve
Jupiter – dark orange, brown, and white/cream
Saturn – sunflower yellow and light orange
Uranus – cobalt blue and light blue or cream
Neptune – royal blue

Hint: For planets with more than one color you will wrap the yarn at the same time.

How to Make Yarn Planets

Now, one by one you will wrap the yarn loosely around books of various sizes. The kids loved this part! Here is what we used:

Mini baby board books for: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars
Large Atlas for: Jupiter and Saturn
Chapter Book (like magic tree house size) for Uranus and Neptune

use multiple color of strings to make mutli-colored yarn planets

Once you have about 1” in girth for the smaller planets and 1-2” thickness for the larger planets, carefully slide the yarn off the book.
Note: It goes quickly, but you will use lots of yarn for the larger planets.

put a rubber band around the center of the balled yarn.

Twist a rubberband around the middle of the yarn several times to create 2 loops. This part should be done by upper elementary or a parent to not undo all the winding you’ve already finished.

Using scissors cut the center of both loops to create a large pom pom planet.

Continue until you’ve made all the 8 inner and outer planets. We also made the asteroid belt out of squished up black/grey construction paper. We choose not to do Pluto which has now been classified as one of the dwarf planets.

keep the ending string of yarn to hang the yarn planet

For Saturn, we added some construction paper cut into an oval with the center cut out and slid it over the planet.

We hung the planets from our ceiling. It was fun for the kids to practice figuring out which one was which and look at them to learn their names and positions in the universe.

Hint: You will want to use a thumbtack to hang the larger, heavier, outer planets.