Plastic Lid Planets

Inspired by our plastic lid Earth craft we created a solar system of recycled plastic lid planets! We've just launched our solar system and space preschool science unit and we love to craft with recycled materials.

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The recycled material for this month's Project Recycle & Create is plastic lids! We had friends collecting for us so we quickly acquired quite the collection. Before crafting with them we played with them in the bath. The kids sorted, stacked, built, and stirred them in the tub.

I used my embossing heat gun to warm the plastic lids before we used the crayons to draw on them. Planets like Jupiter that have striations of color were easy to do. Heat the lid a bit at a time and then draw your stripes directly on the warm plastic.

I would reheat planets like Neptune with its swirly storms to remelt and move around the crayon wax to create the marbled effect.

Saturn is a Play-Doh lid and it melted from the heat but I added rubber band rings that coved the hole right up. Use caution and cover your work surface when heating certain types of plastic lids!

I set the planets up as an invitation to explore. E knew immediately what they were identifying Earth and Mars. We watched The Planets Song video while we played. I noticed E looking at our model to find the planet they sung about as they named each one.

I was surprised that right away she was able to put the planets back in the correct order yet she can't identify them yet. I think this song will help with that!