Free printable planets worksheets
Six sheets on the eight planets: circle the one we live on, circle Saturn's two neighbors, find the smallest in a line-up drawn at true relative size, number the four nearest the Sun, sort rocky planets from gas giants, and circle the bigger of Earth and Mars drawn side by side. Wherever the planets are lined up there are eight of them, in order from the Sun, and Pluto is not among them. Drawn with the book's tools, and in none of it.
US Letter · 6 pages · black and white · no signup
What is on the sheets
Print at actual size (100%), not "fit to page". The target sizes on these pages are chosen for a particular age of hand, and scaling shrinks them.
Using them well
Chant the order
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Say it with the number-the-nearest sheet until it is a chant. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles still works and no longer needs a ninth word.
Same-size cards, different-size planets
Two sheets show the planets as same-size cards so the names can be read, and say so under the cards. The line-up sheet is the corrective: Jupiter is eleven Earths across and Mercury is a dot.
Walk the distances
No sheet can show how far apart the planets are. Put the Sun at one end of a park, take fifteen paces for Mercury, and keep going. You will run out of park before Neptune.
Questions
How many planets are on the worksheets?
Eight: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Pluto is a dwarf planet and the book names it as one where it appears at all, which is not on these sheets.
What age are these planets worksheets for?
Four to six. Circling Earth and Saturn's neighbors work at four with the names read out. Finding the smallest, sorting rocky from gas giant and numbering the nearest four are for five and six, and the order is the kind of thing a five-year-old memorizes as a chant.
Are the planets drawn to scale?
On the line-up, the number-the-nearest sheet and the Earth and Mars sheet, yes: the bodies are drawn at their real relative sizes. The two circle-the-card sheets and the sort use same-size cards so the names under them can be read, and each says so on the page.
Do I need to sign up or pay?
No. One PDF, six pages, no email address. They are not pages of the book: they are six new activities drawn by the book's renderer, with our mark and this address where a page number would be.
Guides that go with these
Teaching the solar system to a 4–6 year old, accurately
Young children can handle accurate astronomy. What they cannot undo easily is a misconception learned at five.
Choosing a bookWhich activity book for which age: 3, 4, 5 and 6
The maze book lists from three. The other three list from four. Here is what sits inside those ranges: the book for each age, the page to open it at, and the sign that says move up.
For grown-upsHow to sit beside a child doing a worksheet
The most challenging part of an activity book is not on the page. It is sitting there while a four-year-old gets it wrong.
How we make themWhy our activity books are printed in black and white
The research behind it, the one finding that argues against it, and what the child gets in return.
Where these came from
These 6 are not in the book.
Day and night, weather, land and water, living things, the moon and stars, and the eight planets, drawn accurately. Eight planets, correct order, true relative scale on the line-up, current NASA naming, and Pluto named as a dwarf planet where it appears at all. A four-year-old cannot check this. A seven-year-old can.
