Earth Science Activity

I teach life science and this was fun doing something with earth science for a change. For my project I found an activity on middleschoolscience.com's website that helped the students to grasp just how big our solar system is and how far some of the planets are from one another. In this activity one sheet of  toilet paper(tp) represented about 18 million miles in space. The students created a large sun and did cut-outs of the eight planets the day before. The next day during first period they went outside to create their solar systems. I had the students in groups of five or six. This was a complete disaster! It was hot & humid (we live in FL) and there was a slight wind. The tp was going everywhere and everyone was miserable. We went back to my classroom and we did this as a group project- much better! A group of students went out the back door to be Uranus- you need several students to hold the layer of tp up, one to count the tp, and another to hold the roll. Another group of student went out the front door and into the courtyard to be Neptune.   After my second class I got the hang of it and the next three periods were good.  If I were to do this again, I would borrow the gym & I would probably use string or twine. Yes, I had a few students who turned themselves into mummies! Probably not a great activity for the end of the year but they did grasp the concept!