This week saw Year 5 kick start a brand new project, Earth and Space, science we are all excited about!  We began by recreating the actual solar system in the school hall! Carefully counting the steps, we placed the planets at the right distance from the sun to see just how far apart they actually all are.  Look at poor Neptune right out by the fire door!

Once we had wrapped our heads round how far the earth is actually from the sun (150 million km!) we then looked at the positions of the planets in space and their order from the sun, our star in the centre of the solar system.  Have a read of our funny mnemonics we invented to help us remember the order!

Finally this week, we looked at how the earth moves in space, how long it takes to orbit the sun, how long it takes to spin on its own axis and how the moon orbits the earth.  Did you know the moon also rotates on its axis but at the same rate it orbits the earth, which is why we only see the one side of the moon?!  Have a look at our heliocentric models of the earth, sun and moon in space!