11671

Solar System Party -6yr- Planet Pinatas

August 2005

Odena in South Hamilton, MA USA

Honorable Mention

We had a solar system/planet party for a six year old.  We had to keep the games simple because the children were quite young -- we had around fifteen children ranging in age from 15 mnths. To 6 years old. 

For decorations/games we made ten piñatas, the sun and nine planets.  We hung these from the top of the swingset.  To decorate outside we used sidewalk chalk to draw the planets and their orbits around the sun on the cement of the playground.  We ran out of room for Pluto and so we made him a football on the grass.  It was fun to have the kids try to find where Pluto was.  The kids also had fun running around the orbit lines and pretending to be different planets.  We also hung up information sheets that my children had drawn and written about each planet.  My son and his friend who worked on the sheets were proud to show off their work.   

For games we played pin the sun on the solar system.  I drew a solar system without the sun on poster board and cut out suns for the children to try to tape in the right place.  We also broke all ten piñatas which took quite a while.  But since each piñata had different candy it kept their attention.   

For food I made crater cookies (sugar cookies that I poked holes in before baking).  We also had moon juice (blue kool-aid) and star shaped jell-o jigglers. 

For the cake I let my son pick out his favorite planet (Pluto) which we are calling blue.  I made a cake from a pyrex baking dish so that it was dome shape.  Then I scooped out parts of the cake for craters and frosted the whole thing blue.  You could do any planet that you want search the internet for realistic pictures to go by.    My son and his friend taught the other kids a planet song that we found on the NASA web page.  It has a verse for every planet.  As far as planning goes, we started work on this party three weeks before hand. 

For the pinata’s we took balloons and blew them up different sizes to coincide with the planet sizes.  Just so you know the sizes from smallest to largest are:  Pluto, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Earth, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter.  Then we used a flour and water mixture (just mix flour with water to make a pastey substance) to paper mache all of the balloons plus the biggest one for the sun.  We used the flour mixture as glue to hold together the cut up newspaper (or old telephone books).  We filled the pinata’s with cheap candy or toys from the dollar store (example:  pack of 6 dino’s for $1)  Then we focused on one planet every day.  We learned about it and my son drew a picture of it and wrote a couple sentences about it.  We hung these up outside.  

Every couple day’s we would paint the pinata’s of the planets that we had studied.   The kids all had a lot of fun (especially with the 10 pinata’s).  And since we worked on this a little each day it wasn’t that much work.

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